Radic: Prosecution Is Running Propaganda Against Me

The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade (VJT) announced today that, based on a “comprehensive review of the evidence gathered,” it had determined that the so called sound cannon was not used at the protest on Slavija Square on March 15 last year. According to the prosecution’s findings, the crowd’s movement from Terazije along King Milan Street toward Slavija Square was a “panicked chain reaction,” triggered after marshals took off their vests and activated a withdrawal protocol. The VJT also announced it would pursue criminal charges against anyone who, it said, deliberately spread false information about the device’s use.

In the same statement, the prosecution names military analyst Aleksandar Radic as one of those it says organized the spread of that claim. The prosecution says a forensic examination of Radic’s mobile phone established his intent to carry out what it calls PSY OPS, or psychological operations, against public opinion.

Radic: The statement is part of the election campaign

In an interview with the newspaper Danas, carried by N1 and Autonomija, Radic said the prosecution’s investigation had been part of a propaganda effort from the start, and that its release today fits the rhythm of the election campaign. He pointed out that President Aleksandar Vucic announced the statement before the prosecution itself published it.

“The fact that President of the Republic Aleksandar Vucic announces the prosecution’s statement in advance speaks for itself. Once again, people with no jurisdiction over the matter know in advance what a state institution will be doing on a Sunday morning. Doesn’t it seem a bit strange to you that on what should be a quiet September Sunday, state officials are at work issuing a statement? And all of it in a propaganda tone,” Radic told Danas.

Most of his response is devoted to explaining the acronym PSY OPS, which the prosecution cites as evidence of intent.

“They are deliberately using the English acronym, actually a term from American military terminology, PSY OPS. I have used PSY OPS as a joke for years, as the name of a Viber group with my journalist friends, where we exchanged information about who bought tanks where around the world, what was happening on the military front, where some new piece of equipment had been shown,” Radic says.

He also argues that the prosecution has misread the timeline of the correspondence it cites, saying the messages in question were written after March 15 and therefore cannot serve as proof of activity planned in advance. He also challenged the prosecution’s reliance on statements from police witnesses whose identities have not been disclosed.

“All the witnesses who were actually there, who have a first and last name, have been dismissed in favor of testimony from people whose names we don’t know, who were on a secret assignment serving a party’s interests. That is where the whole evidentiary process runs into a real problem,” Radic says.

The Informer news site, which published a detailed account of the VJT’s findings the same day, reports that the Higher Court in Belgrade issued a wanted notice for Radic back in June this year, at the prosecution’s request, over suspicion that he committed the criminal offense of preparing acts against the constitutional order and security of the Republic of Serbia, and that, according to those reports, he is no longer in Serbia. N1 and Autonomija, which carried Radic’s interview with Danas, do not mention the wanted notice in their pieces or put the question to him.

Aleksic: An insult to reason

Miroslav Aleksic, leader of the People’s Movement of Serbia, called the VJT’s statement shameful and said he stands by everything he told the National Assembly’s Defense and Interior Affairs Committee about the sound cannon back on March 18 last year.

“Instead of giving the public clear, verifiable answers and establishing responsibility for every circumstance of that event, the VJT offers an explanation about a ‘panicked chain reaction among the crowd,’ as if one of the most serious incidents of the student protests can be reduced to a wave of panic and crowd movement,” Aleksic said in a statement.

He repeated questions he says he first raised back in March: whether the Security Intelligence Agency (BIA) took over the sound cannon from the Gendarmerie a few days before the protest, whether one unit is held by the Interior Ministry’s (MUP) Police Brigade and the other by the Gendarmerie, and whether the device was tested at the Belgrade Gendarmerie detachment’s base in Rakovica. “The public deserves answers based on facts and evidence, not statements that serve to cover up responsibility,” Aleksic said.

Manojlovic: The prosecutor is an accomplice

Savo Manojlovic, leader of the Kreni-Promeni movement, went a step further, accusing the VJT’s chief prosecutor in Belgrade, Nenad Stefanovic, on X of being an accomplice in covering up a crime.

“Prosecutor Nenad Stefanovic is trying to convince us that 2,000 people simultaneously invented the effects of the sound cannon. The man is an accomplice in covering up a crime,” Manojlovic wrote.

The figure Manojlovic cites, around two thousand people who, according to opposition claims, suffered effects that day, stands in contrast to the VJT’s own statement: the prosecution says only 151 people responded to its call to give statements. That gap, between the number of participants claimed to have been affected by the incident and the number the prosecution formally questioned, remains unexplained in the exchanges between the two sides so far.

Neither the VJT nor Radic has so far publicly commented on the question of the wanted notice, and it remains unclear whether and when Radic, should the prosecution’s findings turn into an indictment, might become accessible to Serbia’s judicial authorities.