Hostage from Uršna Sela Speaks Out About the Robber
A month after the dramatic police operation in Slovenia, Đevad Ljutić recounted how the armed Srđan Aleksić held him at gunpoint, demanded medicine and a clean shirt, and he offered him coffee.
A month after the dramatic police operation in Slovenia, Đevad Ljutić recounted how the armed Srđan Aleksić held him at gunpoint, demanded medicine and a clean shirt, and he offered him coffee.
A month after one of the largest police operations in Slovenia in recent years, former hostage Đevad Ljutić decided to share details of the dramatic hostage crisis that ended with the death of the armed robber Srđan Aleksić. The operation, involving around 160 police officers and special unit members, took place at the railway station in Uršna Sela near Novo Mesto.
Ljutić told Slovenian outlet 24ur about the moment he went to pick up his wife from work and realized he wasn't alone. "I looked, and he had the gun pointed at me," he said. At first, he thought it was a police officer, but soon he felt the gun barrel against his back.
After they entered the house and the robber checked every room, the first question came. "Where is your wife?" Aleksić asked him. Ljutić replied that she was at work, and the kidnapper's reaction stayed etched in his memory.
"I answered that she's working. Thank God, he says she's not here. If I kill, I kill one. But it's not my habit to kill innocent people. That's what he said. Those were his first words. If you don't cooperate, you know what follows," the man recalled.
Then came the kidnapper's first demands. He asked for the windows to be covered with blinds, then requested water, a clean shirt, and medication for leg cramps that had set in after he'd been on the run all day. In the ensuing silence, Ljutić offered him coffee.
"Then we talk. I sat here, he sat in the corner. He's looking over there, the gun is a bit away from him," he described the surreal situation in which they spent two tense hours. Meanwhile, police knocked on the front door three times to check if Ljutić was alone.
At the third knock, the situation suddenly changed. "I started drinking coffee, he didn't. Then the police knocked very hard on the door. He immediately jumped up, grabbed the gun, and retreated over there. He went pale; I noticed he wasn't what he should be. I asked him what now. He said to open the door wide and ask what they want," he recounted.
At that moment, Ljutić decided to take a risk. "I went as if that was it. As I started, something in my head told me that now I have a chance. Like someone said to me: now or never, run," he recalled. He bolted through the door, and the officer outside caught him and pulled him to safety.
The house where the couple lived as tenants still bears the scars of the operation-broken windows, shifted furniture, and walls riddled with bullets. In the room where the operation ended, a large bloodstain is still visible. The couple remains in a hotel and refuses to return.
