Sound cannon probe drags on without a single suspect
Belgrade prosecutors opened the case on June 19, yet nearly a month later there is no suspect and no indictment. The prosecution has gone quiet and the tabloids have moved on.
- The Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade opened the case on June 19, yet nearly a month later there is no suspect and no indictment.
- The last person called in for questioning was Serbia Center leader Zdravko Ponos, who appeared on July 1; no one has been summoned since.
- Prosecutors have declined to comment on the case for about ten days, and the tabloids have stopped covering it.
- Military analyst Aleksandar Radic left the country after a broadcaster aired footage of him being followed.
The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade opened an investigation on June 19 over suspicions that organizers of the March 15, 2025 protest had staged the effect of a so-called sound cannon in order to pin the incident on state bodies. Nearly a month later, according to the daily Danas, the file contains no suspect, no indictment, and no fresh summons for questioning.
The last person the prosecution called in for an interview was Serbia Center movement leader Zdravko Ponos, who appeared on July 1. No one has been summoned since. For about ten days the office has not answered questions about the state of the inquiry, and the tabloids that pushed the case onto their front pages for months have abruptly fallen silent. The gap between the loud fanfare and the current quiet has itself become the story.
How the case reached prosecutors
The claim that the sound cannon incident was staged was not born in a courtroom but in the political arena. Minister Darko Glisic had earlier asserted that prosecutors held data on a plan to trigger bloody riots through lies and topple the government, naming Ponos as one of the actors. A media campaign was built on that claim, complete with the questioning of opposition figures and promises that a resolution was coming.
For now, there is no resolution. When an investigation shrinks, after nearly a month, to a single completed interview and not one formal suspect, it raises the question of whether the legal procedure tracked the political rhetoric or lagged behind it. The prosecution’s silence does not close that question; it deepens it, because in a serious case the authorities usually disclose at least the outline of what they are doing.
Was the investigation just spin?
Part of the opposition and several independent outlets read the whole process as the final phase of a crackdown and as spin ahead of the election cycle. As an illustration they cite the case of military analyst Aleksandar Radic, who left Serbia after a broadcaster aired footage of him being followed on June 23, footage that, he says, also captured his underage daughter. Radic argues that the sound cannon story is a cover for his persecution over his criticism of the Military Security Agency.
On the other side, officials still maintain that this is a serious plan the prosecution is obliged to clarify, and that the absence of swift arrests does not mean there is no case. The two readings are hard to reconcile until some official document appears, whether an indictment or a reasoned decision to close the inquiry. Until then, what is visible to the naked eye remains: a big announcement, one man questioned, then silence.
Behind the scenes, people are already calculating how this file will fit the electoral calendar, since an investigation opened amid media noise and closed in silence rarely escapes political arithmetic. For now, only one thing is clear: the burden of proof has not moved from the front pages to the court records.
Which tells you more, the loud announcement of an investigation or the quiet absence of a single suspect a month later?
