Serbia detains 10 officers accused of torturing detainees in protest crackdown

Serbian authorities cuffed nine active police officers and one former officer on Wednesday, the interior ministry said, accusing them of using excessive force against detainees during anti-corruption protests in Belgrade. The suspects all served in an elite unit.

According to the ministry's statement, the officers tortured and intimidated several people held in the garage of the government compound in downtown Belgrade on 14-15 August 2025. They inflicted, in the ministry's words, great pain and severe suffering on a larger number of people through force and threats, aiming to extract information and to punish them unlawfully. Officials released only the initials of those detained.

The detentions land as the first big arrests connected to violence against demonstrators who have filled Serbia's streets over the past two years. The unrest erupted after 16 people died on 1 November 2024, when a concrete canopy collapsed at a renovated railway station in Novi Sad. Protests swept the EU candidate country through 2025 and 2026, and ended with the populist Serbian Progressive Party — loyal to former president Aleksandar Vučić — ousted by the leaderless Student List in a 25 October snap parliamentary election.

Crowd control during those protests was heavy: police fired teargas and stun grenades at crowds and rolled out crowd-control vehicles. Dozens of students and activists who took part say the force left them with injuries and psychological trauma.

Students, activists, opposition politicians and rights watchdogs have long accused Vučić and the SNS of political violence, squeezing the media, ties to organised crime and rampant corruption. Vučić and his allies deny all of it.