The president of the opposition Serbian Republican Party, Nikola Sandulovic, was brutally beaten by members of the secret services after he was detained for questioning, his relatives and lawyer say. 

Sandulovic was arrested at his home on January 3 by agents from the Security and Information Agency (BIA) after apologising for crimes Serbia committed against ethnic Albanians during the Kosovan war of independence in 1998-99. 

According to reports posted on social media, there was no news of Sandulovic until he was found in intensive care at the VMA military hospital in Belgrade on January 4. 

Cedomir Stojkovic, a prominent Serbian human rights lawyer, posted on social network X that Sandulovic's wife informed him her husband was taken forcibly by the security services and subjected to “brutal violence”. 

“I have just heard from Nikola Sandulovic's wife, who told me that in the period from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. he was taken against his will by the security services, whose members beat him during that period and used brutal violence, as a result of which he was taken from their room to the VMA military hospital, where he was kept until the afternoon today without giving any notice to his family or lawyers. An ambulance brought him home some time ago,” Stojkovic wrote. 

According to his daughter Klara Sandulovic, the politician is believed to have been paralysed with a military nerve agent. His body bears various marks and injuries that indicate a recent assault. Photos and video footage show him being moved onto a hospital trolley. 

Sandulovic told Croatia’s Slobodna Dalmacija that she had returned from Split, Croatia, where she was celebrating Christmas after her father was reported missing. 

“Yesterday his wife found the door of the house unlocked, and my father nowhere ... She immediately went to the police, to report him missing, and they just told her 'don't worry madam, he's safe, he'll be back...'! That was the first sign that something was wrong, that something had gone wrong, and she just found out the worst,” she told Slobodna Dalmacija. 

The day before his arrest, Sandulovic visited the town of Prekazi, where he laid a wreath and expressed his condolences to the Jasari family that were wiped out during the war. 

“I am the only politician from Serbia who came to pay his respects to the innocent Albanian victims, the Jašari family, at Prekazi. I apologized and asked for forgiveness on behalf of the Serbs who did not commit this,” he posted on X at the time. 

Adem Jashari was one of the leaders of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who was killed along with dozens of family members in the Prekaz massacre led by the Special Anti-Terrorism Unit of Serbia in March 1998. 

Sandulovic is one of the few prominent Serb politicians to have accepted Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence back in 2008, and is also a strong pro-EU voice within the country. 

This has made him a target of media vitriol as well as several physical attacks in recent years. 

Stojkovic accused the Serbian security services of following the playbook used by the late dictator Slobodan Milosevic back in the 1990s. 

“The new nineties have just begun in Serbia, and the then minister of propaganda in the government of Slobodan Milosevic [Aleksandar Vucic] is the current president of Serbia. And the same playbook is on his desk again,” Stojkovic wrote. 

"And the reasons are exactly the same as during Milosevic's time: Kosovo! This happened yesterday and today to Nikola Sandulović for the same reason: because two days ago on this social network he expressed his condolences for the elimination of 50 members of the Albanian Jašari family in Kosovo in 1998.” 

The attack on Sandulovic comes at a time when the international reputation of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and its unofficial leader Vucic have been tarnished by the conduct of the December 17 general and local elections. Irregularities were strongly criticised by international observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODHIR) and sparked a wave of opposition protests.