Trial of 12 activists Movement of free citizens and the STAV group, accused of attempting to forcefully change the constitutional order began on November 24, 2025, half of them have been in exile ever since.
One of their defenders, Željko Kočić, stated today (February 13) that High Court in Novi Sad rejected the proposal to lift the detention and arrest warrants to allow them to return to their homes.
He assessed it as "particularly worrying" because the activists were detained on March 28 last year, and the court has not yet delivered a decision to the defenders, even though they requested it "more than ten times".
"Delivery of the decision is a legal obligation of the court, because the deadline for an appeal starts only from the receipt of the decision. In this way, the court effectively made it impossible for the defenders to file an appeal and challenge, in our opinion, an illegal decision," Kočić said in a post on social networks.
According to him, an additional indicator of the serious shortcomings of that procedure is the fact that, even after 11 months, Serbia failed to issue an international warrant, so such a circumstance in itself raises serious questions about the legal foundation and sustainability of the procedure.
The trial of Novi Sad students and activists was postponed to February 2 due to the illness of prosecutor Slobodan Josimović, and the continuation is scheduled for May 5.
The defense attorneys demanded that the arrest warrant for six students and activists, who are being tried in absentia, be revoked and that they be allowed to return to Serbia.
BIA wiretapped activists
The proceedings began on November 24 last year, against the accused activists of the Movement of Free Citizens (PSG) Marija Vasić, Davor Stefanović, Lad Jovović, Srđan Đurić and Mladen Cvijetić, and the organization Students Against Authoritarian Power (STAV) Lazar Dinić, Mila Pajić, Doroteja Antić, Anja Pitulić, Branislav Đorđević, Jovan Dražić and Dejan Bagarić.
The defenders claim that it is a political process against dissidents of the regime, and that the activists' conversation, as the only evidence in that process, was not legally obtained.
It is a recording of a meeting of activists in the premises of the Movement of Free Citizens (PSG) in Novi Sad before the student protest on March 15, which was eavesdropped by the BIA.
Six activists were arrested on March 13, while the other half were outside the country at the time. Since then, they have not returned to Serbia and are being tried in absentia.
They are accused of, as stated in the indictment of the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Novi Sad, "agreeing and planning" to "try to forcefully change the constitutional order of Serbia" during the March 15 protest in Belgrade, as well as "overthrow the highest state authorities and representatives of those authorities".
The prosecutor stated in the indictment that he is asking for five years in prison for all the accused.
Six arrested activists spent more than seven months in prison and house arrest, and professor Marija Vasić spent part of her detention in the prison hospital in Belgrade due to the hunger strike.
