Officers from the Prison Police Directorate questioned Zdravko Ponos, head of the opposition occasion Serbia Centre, SRCE, on Wednesday, over his claims that a sound cannon used to be fashioned in opposition to anti-authorities protesters at a serious rally in Belgrade on March 15 final year.
The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office said the interview used to be performed at the query of the Particular Department for Combating Excessive-Tech Crime of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office “to catch major files” about a post by Ponos on X, revealed on March 15, 2025.
“In that post, he used to be the first to yell that a ‘sound cannon’ had been fashioned in opposition to citizens gathered at the discontinuance of the philosophize held earlier that day,” the prosecution licensed. “The query to catch the wanted files used to be made for the plot of determining whether or no longer there had been grounds to suspect the prison offence of causing terror and dysfunction,” it added.
Within the X post, addressing the authorities, Ponos said: “You fashioned a sound cannon. You fired at citizens whereas they had been silently paying tribute to the victims of your regime. Man, you fired at folks that had been protesting peacefully.”
Shortly after the police interviewed Ponos on Wednesday, Dragan Vucicevic, editor of the professional-authorities tabloid Informer, read out files from the interview on a stay TV programme.
“Ten minutes after the informational interview I used to be summoned to at the Prison Police Directorate (UKP) had ended, Vucicevic used to be reading the official legend of that interview on Informer,” Ponos licensed on X.
The rally on March 15 2025 used to be the highest philosophize ever organised in Serbia, gathering spherical 300,000 of us, in holding with the NGO Archive of Public Gatherings. It used to be organised by students calling for accountability for the deaths of 16 folks that died when the Novi Sad railway space canopy collapsed several months earlier. One day of a silent vigil, the group without warning dispersed in a immediate stampede.
A few of them later instructed BIRN that, just correct sooner than the stampede started, they heard a noise that they variously described as “unnatural”, “like from a film”, or like a jet plane. Others described a “originate of low howling sound”.
Identical testimonies, numbering over 2,800, peaceable by Serbian NGOs, also identified the sound as both like a automobile, a plane or rocket, or like something from a pure wretchedness.
The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation on June 19, under the suspicion that “simulation of the utilize of a ‘sound cannon’ used to be deliberate and implemented at the discontinuance of the philosophize on March 15, 2025, after which divulge authorities … had been blamed for it by segment of the public”.
In a observation, the prosecution wrote that it had ordered police to anticipate the organisers and participatants within the March 15 philosophize, besides to those that publicly spoke referring to the “utilize” of a sound cannon and these that had allegedly “organised” protesters to gape clinical abet following the incident.
After the investigation used to be launched, the prosecution raided the house of protection power analyst Aleksandar Radic and known as for the questioning of the proprietor and editor of the news portal Srbin Files, D.Z.
A bunch of 14 prominent Serbian NGOs on June 23 meanwhile urged the Serbian authorities to query the UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights to originate an fair fact-finding mission into whether or no longer a sonic disturbance used to be fashioned on March 15, 2025.
Within the joint observation, they said that “the home judiciary has succumbed to political stress and transformed the investigation into the political persecution of victims and these that supported them”.