A 36-year-old man was fined 1,131 kuna (€152) for throwing food at Serb minority MP Milorad Pupovac last Friday, and has also been ordered to pay 300 kuna (€40) in court costs, the Zagreb Misdemeanour Court said on Thursday.

Sasa Mucnjak was brought to court on charges of misdemeanour, and fined for disturbing the peace on September 28, when he threw food at Milorad Pupovac and fellow MP Boris Milosevic, both of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS), as they were passing by a restaurant in the central open air market in the Croatian capital.

The Serb National Council (SNV) has said that the assault was an open manifestation of hatred, public humiliation and physical endangerment of the two MPs.

Considering the “political and media campaign against Pupovac and SDSS that has been going on for some time now”, and in particular over the past few weeks, SNV added that the attack “doesn’t come as a surprise because campaigns like that incite people not only to hate, but to commit violence against him and the institutions he heads, and in turn against the people he represents”.

SNV is the main organising body of ethnic Serbs in Croatia, and SDSS is the political party from which all three Serb ethnic minority MPs come.

Pupovac’s SDSS is currently aligned with the ruling centre-right coalition led by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.

The state leadership, political parties and associations have all condemned the incident in the strongest terms.

(€1 = 7.42 kuna)

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