Fourteen NGOs call on state to ask the United Nations to set up a fact-finding mission into whether a ‘sonic weapon’ was used in an attempt to disperse a protest in Belgrade last year.
Gordana Andric
A group of 14 prominent Serbian NGOs on Tuesday urged the Serbian authorities to ask the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to form an independent fact-finding mission into a sonic disturbance at an anti-government protest in Belgrade on March 15, 2025.
“Given that the domestic judiciary has succumbed to political pressure and transformed the investigation into the political persecution of victims and those who supported them, a UN mission is the only remaining guarantee capable of impartially establishing the full truth about the sonic blast that affected thousands of citizens of Serbia,” the NGOs wrote in a joint statement.
During the protest, which called for accountability for the deaths of 16 people at the Novi Sad railway station disaster several months earlier, a crowd of thousands of people standing in silent vigil suddenly dispersed in a brief stampede.
Many later said they had heard an “unnatural”, noise “like from a movie”, or a jet plane. Others described a “low howling sound”. In the aftermath, many suspected that the authorities had used a sonic weapon or sound cannon to break up the rally, which the authorities deny.
Serbian police at first denied, but later – faced with photo evidence and media reports – admitted owning acoustic devices. However, police denied using any sonic weapon at the protest.
The call for a UN investigation comes after the Higher Prosecution in Belgrade raided the apartment of military analyst Aleksandar Radic on Monday within its own new investigation into the incident.
On June 19, the Higher Prosecution announced it had launched an investigation based on suspicion that protesters, NGOs, experts and media had colluded to spread information that a sound cannon might have been used in Serbia in a bid to smear the government.
The investigation was opened after the prosecution found minutes from a meeting organised by Serbian students – who have been the main force behind the mass protests – which was held on an eve of the January 2025 Belgrade protests. In them, students discussed safety issues and the potential use of a sound cannon by the authorities was mentioned as one of the risks.
At the time, notes show, the only listed measure to mitigate this risk was not to stage the protest.
The Higher Prosecution, however, wrote that it had ordered police to identify and question the meeting organisers, people who had participated in the March 15 protest as well as those who publicly spoke about the “use” of a sound cannon and those who “organised” protesters to seek medical aid following the incident.
The Higher Prosecution statement said that all these people are under suspicion of acting with “the aim of creating panic among the public and fear among citizens, and provoking unrest that would lead to a violent change of the constitutional order and endanger state security”.
Aleksandar Radic, whose premises were raided, was one of people who publicly spoke about the alleged use of a sound cannon.
Similarly, just two days after the protest, the Higher Prosecution Office ordered an investigation into those who spread the claim on social media that dozens of patients had sought medical aid, complaining of health issues that could have been caused by a sound cannon.
Belgrade Emergency Centre denied having received such patients.
The minutes from the students’ meeting that the Prosecution is now following were actually gathered within an investigation into the death of a 25-year-old woman who died after falling through a fifth-floor window at the Faculty of Philosophy on the night of March 26.
The Prosecution has ordered the police to enter, search and gather materials from the faculty and Belgrade University rectorate’s offices – premises that were mainly out of their reach until then, due to the strong protection that Serbia’s Constitution provides to the autonomy of the universities.
The investigation into the circumstances of this death is still ongoing, three months later.
In a meantime, Serbian NGOs have collected over 2,800 testimonies of protesters who identified the sound they heard at the March 2025 protest as either a vehicle, a plane or a rocket, or like something from a natural disaster. Afterwards, some said they had experienced hearing problems, headaches or even heart issues.
As BIRN previously reported, it is still unclear what happened at the March 15 vigil and whether a sound weapon was used or not.
The First Basic Court in Belgrade has opened a case on the incident and questioned over 170 people, but it is still in the pre-investigation phase.
A case has also been brought before the European Court for Human Rights, but a ruling here is far off.
In April last year, the Serbian Information Security Agency, BIA, published a report it said had been done by an “expert group” from Russia’s Federal Security Service, FSB, which concluded that the acoustic devices were not used during the protest.
The signatories to the fresh call for a UN investigation are A11 – Initiative for Economic and Social Rights, Autonomous Women’s Center, Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, Centre for Cultural Decontamination, Centre for Judicial Research – CEPRIS, CRTA, FemPlatz, Civic Initiatives, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights – YUCOM, the Slavko Curuvija Foundation, Trag Foundation and Women in Black.
