Prosecutor's Office: Sonic cannon scandal planned in January 2025

BELGRADE - As part of a preliminary investigation into the death of a female student identified as M Z and the circumstances of a March 26 ignition of pyrotechnic devices inside the building of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, as well as into potential omissions regarding the safety of students and Faculty staff, the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade said on Friday it had obtained information indicating that, at a January 2025 meeting of the Students In Blockade organisation ahead of a March 15, 2025 protest in Belgrade, a simulation of the use of a "sonic cannon" had been planned with the aim of blaming the state authorities for the incident.

During a March 27 search of the Faculty building, the authorities temporarily seized documentation of the plenums of several university faculties, including an act on a January 22, 2025 meeting of the organisation's Umbrella Working Group on Security, the Prosecutor's Office said in a statement.

Among other topics, the participants of the meeting discussed a "sonic cannon", which they said would elicit "a massive response from Brussels", and noted that "a solution where people get out of the way when they see a sonic cannon has been the practice in China."

The participants of the meeting and other unidentified persons are suspected to have taken actions in the period that followed to simulate the use of a "sonic cannon" by state authorities during the March 15, 2025 protest in Belgrade in order to accuse them in the domestic and international public of using a "sonic cannon" and to cause panic, strike fear among the citizens and spark unrest that would lead to a violent overthrow of the constitutional order and put the security of the state under threat, the statement said.

The Prosecutor's Office said that, in accordance with Article 282, Paragraph 4 of the Law on Criminal Proceedings, it had ordered the Criminal Police Directorate and the Counter-Terrorism Service to gather the required information to establish whether the actions of unidentified persons who had participated in the meeting constituted significant elements of the criminal offence of calling for a violent overthrow of the constitutional order under Article 309 of the Criminal Code or any other criminal offence prosecuted ex officio.

The police were ordered to identify and interview the participants of the January 22, 2025 meeting of the student working group.