dpa
Zagreb
The Serbian Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has brought charges against 13 people over last month’s fatal collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad.
The accident on November 1 killed 15 people and injured dozens more in the northern Serbian city. Among the accused is former construction minister Goran Vesic, who resigned in the aftermath. The incident shook the whole of Serbia, triggering a wave of protests and university occupations directed against the corrupt and authoritarian rule of President Aleksandar Vucic.
The station in Novi Sad was renovated before the roof collapsed during major construction work on the new railway line from Belgrade to Budapest. This is a prestigious project for which Chinese general contractors are responsible in Serbia and Hungary.
Critics accuse Vucic’s leadership of jeopardizing the project through a lack of transparency, corruption, sloppiness and politically induced time pressure.
The protests are mostly organized under the slogan “Corruption kills.”
The charges brought by the public prosecutors in Novi Sad must still be confirmed in court in order to become effective. It is not known when this will happen.
While 10 suspects - mainly subordinate project managers of the reconstruction works - are in custody, Vesic, a senior official of his ministry and the ex-head of the infrastructure subsidiary of Serbian Railways remain at large.
The public prosecutor’s office has also requested that they be remanded in custody in connection with the indictment.
