Raska police search student's home over ocisti.net site

Police searched the home of a student identified as A. P. in Raska on Thursday, October 22, three days before the elections. The search began around four in the morning, and the family says the reason is a suspicion that he built the ocisti.net website. The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade confirmed the search but insists A. P. was not arrested, while his lawyer, Ivan Ninic, speaks of an arrest operation.

Why is A. P. under suspicion?

A. P. is a student at the Faculty of Computing in Belgrade. According to his father, whose account the local portal Razglas published this morning, police came over a suspicion that he made a site listing the “bots” of the Serbian Progressive Party. Outlets that picked up Razglas’s report write that the search was carried out by inspectors from the Interior Ministry’s (MUP) High-Tech Crime Department.

Lawyer Ninic painted a different picture on X. In his post, officers of the Criminal Police Directorate “launched an operation to arrest a student from Raska on suspicion that he created the ocisti.net platform, which counts more than 32,000 SNS bot accounts.” That figure appears only in Ninic’s post and has not been confirmed by a second source. The prosecutors, in the part of their statement that the media relayed, mention neither the site nor the number of accounts.

Sources also disagree on who carried out the search. Ninic says it was the Criminal Police Directorate, while Beta and Nova.rs refer to high-tech crime inspectors.

What did the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office say?

The prosecutors answered Ninic’s post with a statement that identified the student only by initials. They confirmed the search but rejected the claim of an arrest:

We most strongly condemn this inaccurate post, which aims to spread disinformation on social media and mislead the public. It is true that, on the order of the Higher Court in Belgrade, a search of the apartment of A.P. was carried out over a suspicion of the criminal offense of Unauthorized Access to a Protected Computer, Computer Network and Electronic Data Processing under Article 302 of the Criminal Code. A.P. has not been arrested, nor has he been placed in detention.

The prosecutors speak of an “apartment,” while the family and the media write about a house. According to the statement, the search was ordered by the Higher Court in Belgrade, and the suspicion concerns the offense under Article 302 of the Criminal Code. The prosecutors also promised that the public would be “informed in good time about the outcome of the proceedings” in the case.

What does the family claim?

Family members, as relayed by Nova.rs and Masina, say the inspectors did not show a search warrant. According to the same accounts, the inspectors at one point waited for a decision from the competent authorities before seizing the electronic devices and taking them away for forensic examination.

After a search that lasted several hours, Masina, citing Razglas, reports that computers and other electronic devices were seized but that the student was not taken in. That matches the prosecutors’ claim that he was not arrested. The same source says that gathered residents of Raska whistled at the inspectors as they left.

The prosecutors’ statement, in the part that has been published, does not say whether the warrant was shown to the family, so for now that claim is only an allegation by the family.

What happens next?

The prosecutors have not said when the public might receive word on the outcome of the case. The search took place on the day the campaign ends, with the elections on Sunday. On the same day, as Masina reports, the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that five people were arrested in Novi Sad on suspicion of planning violence on election day, and it announced reinforced duty shifts for public prosecutors in Belgrade and in the basic prosecutor’s offices under its jurisdiction for the period from October 25 to November 5.