Police Investigate Weapons Found Near Serb PM’s Family Home

The Serbian prime minister said Sunday an investigation is underway to determine whether a large cache of weapons found near his family house outside Belgrade was linked to a possible attack against him.

Aleksandar Vucic said that a DNA analysis will show whether a trunk containing an anti-tank rocket, hand grenades and sniper ammunition was left in a forest by “accident” or it is something much more serious. He says that if no DNA samples are discovered, it could be a job planned by professionals.

Vucic was evacuated from the house when the cache was discovered by police on Saturday.

Vucic said the location where the weapons were discovered is “ideal” for launching an assassination attempt, but added that it may have nothing to do with a possible attack.

The anti-tank rocket “can aim from 200 meters and if somebody knows the terrain, there is no missing,” Vucic told reporters. “I think someone left it there by accident, but that is even a bigger problem because lots of children could have been hurt” if the cache had exploded, he added.

Serbia’s first democratically elected Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was killed by a sniper shot in March 2003 in front of the government headquarters in central Belgrade. More than a dozen nationalist paramilitary members and criminals have been convicted and sentenced in connection with the assassination.

Vucic, a former ultranationalist turned pro-European Union reformer, was Djindjic’s strong political opponent at the time.