The Rijeka Municipal Court fined a man 100 euros for disturbing public order and peace, while the discrimination charge was dismissed due to a procedural error by the police.
A ride on Rijeka's bus line number 1 in February 2023 turned into a dramatic event after which the Autotrolej driver stated he feared for his life. The Rijeka Municipal Court recently concluded the case with a verdict finding the defendant, a Croatian citizen born in 1986, guilty of disturbing public order and peace, and imposing a fine of 100 euros.
According to the facts established by the court, the incident began when the man boarded at the Pećine stop. During the ride, he was loud and shouting, and at one point addressed the driver in a threatening tone: "Come on, come here so I can knock you out". He also attempted to physically attack him, but the driver, with the help of passengers present, managed to eject him from the vehicle at the Kantrida stop.
The driver recounted in detail what happened in court. According to his account, the passenger appeared to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs and did not have a ticket. At every stop, he protested when the bus stopped, and at the moment he was supposed to get off, he held onto the handles and provoked him, saying: "Come on, throw me out if you can."
The ejected passenger did not calm down. The driver testified that the man threw stones at him. After notifying the police, the driver turned the bus around at Bivio and headed back towards the center of Rijeka. However, at the 3. maj stop, he spotted the same man again, this time accompanied by another person.
According to the driver's testimony, the other man wore a balaclava and held a bat, while the defendant held a stone. They struck the bus with the bat and threw the stone at it. Fortunately, no windows were broken, and the driver continued without stopping. At that point, there were no passengers left in the vehicle.
The driver, a father of six, stated in court that throughout the entire event he was "really afraid for himself and his life". The incident, as he added, humiliated him, and he requested his superiors not to assign him to line number 1 in the future. He emphasized that he had no prior conflicts with the law and was not prone to confrontation.
The defendant told the police a completely different version. He claimed that everything happened on a different line and that the conflict started because the driver did not allow his sick friend to board the bus. Although he admitted to a verbal altercation, he described a much milder sequence of events. The court, however, accepted the driver's testimony, deeming it "sincere, credible, logical, and above all convincing", and dismissed the defendant's story as untruthful and aimed at avoiding responsibility.
For disturbing public order and peace, the man received the maximum fine of 100 euros, in accordance with the law in force at the time of the incident. If he pays two-thirds of that amount, i.e., 66.67 euros, within the prescribed period, the fine will be considered fully paid. Due to his unemployment, the court also exempted him from paying the costs of the proceedings.
The second part of the verdict, however, brought an unexpected twist. The police also charged the defendant under the Anti-Discrimination Act for insults of a national nature, specifically for the words: "F*ck your Gypsy mother, why did you stop". For this part of the charge, the man was acquitted, but not because the court did not believe the words were spoken. The problem arose in the way the police formulated the charging document.
The court clarified that for such an offense, the factual description must explicitly state that the person acted with direct intent to cause fear or create a hostile, humiliating, or offensive environment based on someone's ethnicity, thereby violating the dignity of another person. It was precisely this key element, according to the court, that was not correctly stated in the police's charging document, which is why the court could not establish guilt for this offense.
