Serbia’s Security Intelligence Agency (BIA) is suspected of illegally intercepting communications belonging to prosecutors from the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime (JTOK), including its head, Mladen Nenadić.
According to an investigative report published on Sunday by the Serbian media outlet Radar, the surveillance was allegedly justified on the grounds that the prosecutors were suspected of involvement in espionage. However, according to sources cited by the outlet, the actual reason behind the monitoring was linked to the investigation into the collapse of the canopy at the Novi Sad railway station, which claimed 16 lives.
According to Radar, the BIA had intercepted the telephone communications of several prosecutors and monitored their electronic communications. This allegedly enabled agency officials to obtain information about meetings, activities and investigative plans concerning the case known as the “Canopy” investigation.
A source cited by the outlet, whose identity has not been disclosed for security reasons, stated that the intercepted phones of the prosecutors had also been used to monitor meetings taking place within the JTOK premises.
“Through these means, the BIA obtained information about what prosecutors were doing in the Canopy case, but that was not all. They also listened to other prosecutors who were in the same rooms as their monitored colleagues. This is how the head of the JTOK, Mladen Nenadić, was also intercepted, as he is in daily contact with all the prosecutors in this office,” the source stated.
According to the investigation, covert surveillance measures against the prosecutors were initially authorised on 9 April 2026 and subsequently extended on 30 April, 29 May, 19 June and, most recently, on 7 October.
On 29 October, BIA Director Vladimir Orlić initiated the complete termination of these surveillance measures. However, according to Radar, some of the measures were subsequently reinstated for other purposes related to the agency’s mandate to monitor criminal groups.
The surveillance of the prosecutors reportedly continued until 29 October.
Meanwhile, the Rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Đokić, also called for a comprehensive investigation into how the surveillance equipment had been installed and for those responsible to be identified.
The media outlet reports that the alleged surveillance of prosecutors, together with the discovery of monitoring equipment at the Faculty of Law, has raised serious concerns about the potentially unlawful and indiscriminate use of surveillance measures by security institutions during Aleksandar Vučić’s rule.
