Dacic: Crossbow attack confirmed as act of terrorism

BELGRADE - Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said on Monday a statement by the wife of a man who was gunned down after wounding a Serbian gendarme outside the Israeli embassy in Belgrade on Saturday confirmed the attack was an act of terrorism.

Milos Zujovic, 25, an Islamic convert from Mladenovac near Belgrade who had moved to Novi Pazar, southwestern Serbia, fired a crossbow arrow at 34-year-old gendarme Milos Jevremovic, wounding him in the neck.

Acting in self-defence, Jevremovic shot down Zujovic, whose religious name was Salahudin.

Zujovic was later found to have had ties with Wahhabism, a movement of Islamic extremists.

Speaking to Pink TV, Dacic said Montenegrin police had interrogated Besa Zujovic, the attacker's Montenegrin-born ethnic Albanian wife, and that her statement confirmed the attack was an act of terrorism.

"Montenegrin police have seized her phone and once the phone arrives here for an expertise, we will see if all we have heard is true."

Dacic explained that, in a WhatsApp video message sent to his wife minutes before the attack, Zujovic had said a bus was "taking him to Jannah, or paradise," and that two other subsequent messages contained references to "Israelis killing Muslims."

"That definitely puts an end to debates about what the motives were. It is clear it was a terrorist attack because he (Zujovic) contacted his wife from a bus that he said was taking him to Jannah. In a way, he bid farewell to life, that was his farewell message to his wife," Dacic said.

He urged Serbia's Muslim community to reject rhetoric coming largely from the Democratic Action Party, which has criticised actions by Serbian authorities as allegedly being anti-Muslim.

He said many local Muslim religious leaders had been targeted by Wahhabis.