Belgrade parents face charges after horse beaten in street

The Belgrade Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office has concluded that the parents, not the children who did the beating, are the ones who answer for a horse assaulted on a Belgrade street. The file has been passed to the First Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade. The same document asks that the horse be taken away from the family.

What happened in Palilula

The incident took place on July 22, 2026, in the area covered by the Palilula police station. A citizen identified in the file only as A. M. found two minors beating a horse harnessed to a cart with a wooden stick and forcing it to climb a hill. A. M. held the children there.

Footage was later posted on the Instagram page Moj Beograd and drew a public reaction. Ten days passed between the beating and the prosecutors taking a position. That decision came on August 1, 2026.

Why can’t the children be prosecuted?

Both minors were under 14 at the time. Serbian law does not allow criminal proceedings against anyone that young. The file does not close because of it, the weight simply shifts to the adults responsible for them.

So prosecutors examined the conduct of the parents rather than the conduct of the children. In this case the two children are no longer the ones who beat a horse, they are the ones whose care was found wanting.

The case against the mother and father

The Belgrade Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office said in its statement:

the actions of their mother and father contain the essential elements of the criminal offence of Neglect and Abuse of a Minor

The parents are also accused of forcing the children into work unsuited to their age, specifically collecting scrap material and cardboard from municipal waste. That part of the file has nothing to do with the horse and concerns the children’s daily routine, which is how a single video produced two separate grounds.

For now these are accusations. Guilt is established by a court, and until a final verdict the classification stands as a claim, not a finding.

The horse will be seized

Prosecutors also asked that the competent basic prosecutor’s office instruct the Republic Veterinary Inspectorate to remove the horse from the family. The stated reason is to keep the animal from being subjected to inhumane treatment again.

The inspectorate here acts on a prosecutor’s instruction rather than on its own assessment. The horse’s fate is therefore tied to how the file moves through the basic prosecutor’s office, not to a separate administrative ruling.

What comes next

The First Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade now decides whether to proceed against the mother and father, and whether to issue the instruction to the veterinary inspectors. The higher office asked for both at once, criminal liability for the parents and removal of the animal.

Until July 22 this was one citizen’s report from a street in Palilula. Ten days on it is a prosecution file carrying two demands, and both now sit with the basic prosecutor’s office.