Man With Hand Grenade Threatened To Blow Himself Up In Serbian Presidents Headquarters

BELGRADE, Serbia – A man with a hand grenade entered the Serbian president's headquarters Thursday and threatened to detonate the device if his court case is not settled within the day, officials said.
President Boris Tadic's office said the leader entered the building after the standoff began, but it would not say why he went into the building, where SWAT teams were dealing with the situation.
The man, identified by one official as a bankrupt businessman, is seated in a small lobby at a side entrance, surrounded by shielded policemen pointing guns at him while negotiators tried to persuade him to surrender, Belgrade's independent B-92 radio said.
Many people were still inside the building, including office workers. And the president's spokeswoman moved back and forth between the building and reporters.
Police stopped all traffic in the busy downtown area.
Security people in the lobby had taken away one grenade from the middle-aged man, but he still was holding a second grenade with its pin removed, said Jasmina Stojanov, Tadic's press office spokeswoman.
She could not say what the man's motive was. But another government official identified him as Dragan Maric, 57, and said he had announced his plan in an e-mail sent to various government addresses.
The man said in the e-mail that he would blow himself up if a court did not rule in his favor in an unspecified case by 4 p.m. (1400 GMT) Thursday, the official said.
Maric, once a wealthy businessman, has staged several public hunger strikes since his company went bankrupt in the early 2000s. In 2004, he threatened to burn himself alive, He also offered his kidney for sale that year to get money for living.
"Even death is better than tyranny," the man said in the e-email, according to the official, who refused to be named because she was not entitled to discuss the incident.
The incident follows U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit Wednesday to Belgrade, which nationalists opposed. The United States recognized Kosovo's declared independence from Serbia last year, a change Serbia has vowed never to accept.