Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is suing the authors of the two-part Ruler serial aired on Serbian N1 TV in February 2020, the FoNet news agency was told by the JSP production house.

The lawsuit claims that Ruler author, the late Slavisa Lekic, and co-authors Jovana Polic and Sanja Loncar, inflicted “emotional pain and suffering” on Vucic and damaged his “high-ranked reputation and honor”. It says that the President “felt fear of a high intensity” because the Ruler serial was a kind of “media coup against the Serbian head of state”, the JSP TV production house said.

A hearing has been scheduled for April 11 when Polic, Loncar, and Vucic are to appear to testify at the First Basic Court in Belgrade.

The production house said that Vucic was asked for an interview during the making of the Ruler serial, but his cabinet never replied to the request.

“Instead, a witch hunt was launched and Aleksandar Vucic made a number of statements, gave interviews, and appeared on TV shows when he voiced a series of false, incomplete, and offensive remarks about the authors of the series. Regime media, following the president’s lead, published more than 1,000 stories, reports and shows in just two weeks attacking in response to the two shows. The series authors sued Vucic for all that,” a press release said.

It said that Polic and Loncar were served with the counter-suit two years after they filed suit, three years after Ruler was aired and a year after Lekic died.

“Vucic, sued and counter-suing, is President of Serbia and certainly enjoys a higher reputation than Polic and Loncar. He is a family man, married and the father of three children. The statements in the show inflict pain on both him and his family members who are often exposed to inappropriate questions and comments by many people, even some close to them. He is especially affected when his children pass on the questions they have been asked about their father and when he feels their suffering,” the counter-suit says.

It does not list a single specific thing in violation of the law that the journalists are alleged to have committed. They asked: “Do you, Mr President, intend to formally abolish freedom of expression or is this just more pressure on free-thinking people who are not ruled by fear?”