ANEM: Veran Matić attacked, Serbian Parliament security says incident not noticed

Journalist Veran Matić, a member of the Permanent Working Group for the Safety of Journalists and President of the Board of Directors of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), was attacked last night around 20 pm in front of the Serbian Parliament, ANEM announced.

Matić was attacked while filming a public gathering in front of the National Assembly, when an unknown young man forcibly snatched his phone, despite Matić identifying himself as a journalist and requesting that the device be returned to him, ANEM said in a statement.

They state that the phone was returned to him only after the intervention of Đorđe Prelić, convicted of the murder of French football fan Brice Taton.

In a brief conversation, Prelić accused Matić of "ruining his life" with his previous reporting on B92 television, it is reported.

After the incident, Matić contacted the security of the Serbian Parliament, but received a response that "the incident was not noticed" and to report the case to the police.

ANEM states that the case was reported to the Stari Grad Police Station.

The Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs did not respond to an urgent inquiry from Radio Free Europe (RFE) about whether the circumstances of the attack are being investigated, and stated that the attacker was Đorđe Prelić.

ANEM calls for an immediate response from institutions and emphasizes that the attack on Matić "must not be treated outside the context of the campaign that has been waged against journalists for a long time."

The entire incident took place near Pioneer Park, which has been blocked for more than a year because government supporters had set up a tent settlement there, better known as Ćaciland.

Đorđe Prelić Prela, convicted of the murder of Brice Taton and former fan leader, has previously been seen at rallies of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

In August 2025, he was in Ćaciland near the Serbian Presidency during a gathering of progressives, which RFE/RL wrote about.

Also, according to media reports and claims by opposition leaders, Prelić appeared at ruling party rallies in other cities in Serbia, including at a rally in Sremska Mitrovica in February 2025.

Prelić was initially sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2011, while on the run, for masterminding the attack on Taton. The Court of Appeal reduced the sentence to 15, then to 12, and finally to 10 years, the minimum sentence for aggravated murder.

He was arrested in 2013 near Barcelona and extradited to Serbia a year later.

He was released in 2021 after the Court of Appeal overturned the decision of the High Court, which had previously denied him parole.

Brice Taton and a group of French fans traveled to Belgrade in September 2009 to watch a football match between Partizan and Toulouse. Instead of a sporting spectacle, they encountered violence that shook Serbia.

They were attacked in downtown Belgrade by a group of hooligans associated with the Partizan fan club. The court later determined that Taton was brutally beaten and then thrown from a railing above the stairs on Obilićev Venac, more than four meters high, onto a concrete surface.

Shortly after the tragic event, police detained ten Partizan fans, while the two suspected leaders of the group, Đorđe Prelić and Dejan Puzigaća, fled the country and were on the run for years.