Human rights lawyer Nikola Lakić launched a blistering legal assault against the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) on Thursday, accusing police officers of committing a string of severe criminal offenses by immediately leaking a classified interrogation transcript to a pro-regime tabloid network.
The leak occurred just two minutes after Zdravko Ponoš, the president of the opposition party Srbija Centar (SRCE), signed his official statement inside the Criminal Police Directorate (UKP). The document was instantly sent via Viber to Dragan J. Vučićević, the editor-in-chief of Informer, who read the classified police notes live on air during an emergency television broadcast.
The Sonic Cannon Pre-Investigative Farce
The interrogation itself forms part of a highly controversial pre-investigative sweep launched by the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office (VJT) in Belgrade.
The state is pursuing targeted opposition figures over public statements made following the March 15, 2025 anti-government protests, during which thousands of citizens and medical professionals alleged that state security forces deployed long-range acoustic weaponry (“sound cannons”) to aggressively disperse crowds.
| Procedural Timeline: The Interrogation Leak | Elapsed Time |
| Ponoš enters UKP Headquarters to give a formal citizen statement regarding his March 2025 social media posts. | 0 Minutes |
| Official Note (Službena beleška) is completed and physically signed by Ponoš, his legal team, and interrogating officers. | End of Session |
| Classified file is transmitted via Viber from a police official’s mobile device directly to Informer television. | +2 Minutes |
| Tabloid broadcast goes live, with host Dragan J. Vučićević reading the internal criminal police document verbatim on screen. | +10 Minutes |
A Breakdown of Police Criminal Liability
Advokat Lakić emphasized that the incident strips away any remaining illusion of judicial independence in Serbia, revealing that the Criminal Police Directorate is operating directly as an agile field branch for pro-government media operations.
“By directly leaking a signed police document to a commercial tabloid pipeline, the police officers involved and the media editors have collectively committed multiple heavy offenses under the Criminal Code of Serbia,” Lakić declared to news agency Beta.
Lakić categorized the exact legal breaches as follows:
- Abuse of Official Position (Zloupotreba službenog položaja): Utilizing state police infrastructure and restricted case files to achieve unauthorized political and media advantages.
- Trading in Influence (Trgovina uticajem): The illicit coordination between judicial administration entities and external political instruments.
- Leaking Official Secrets (Odavanje službene tajne): Broadly distributing active pre-investigative data before a formal case file has even been processed by an assigned court.
Calls for Immediate Detention Ignored
Lakić argued that the case prosecutor, Vladimir Živković, had a binding legal obligation to issue immediate arrest warrants for the leaking officers and the media figures executing the broadcast. Instead, the prosecution has continued its selective campaign against opposition politicians.
The defense attorney warned that the entire apparatus behind this farce—led directly by the Chief of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade, Nendad Stefanović—will face total systemic accountability and swift criminal prosecution once institutional integrity is restored to the country.
