Students in Blockade have said they will not allow the case against nine of their colleagues to end without accountability, following the Belgrade Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office’s decision to withdraw its indictment proposal after evidence in the proceedings was ruled unlawfully obtained.
In a statement published on their website on Monday, the students questioned why it had taken more than a year for the authorities to reach this decision and who would be held responsible for the consequences their colleagues had endured during that period.
The nine students had been accused of preparing an act against the constitutional order and security of Serbia. According to the student movement, they had spent approximately a year and a half being targeted by pro-government media, labelled as terrorists and portrayed as enemies of the state, while the allegations against them were presented as established facts.
“Now, after everything, the court has determined that the evidence on which part of the charges was based had been obtained unlawfully,” the statement said.
The students stressed that the excluded evidence had been the only evidence against one of their colleagues and the sole basis for part of the accusations in the case. They argued that, despite the lack of legally obtained evidence, their colleagues had been publicly portrayed as a threat to the state.
They also insisted that they had never doubted their colleagues’ innocence.
“We knew this even when they were being called terrorists, when their photographs were being shown on television and when they were portrayed as enemies of the state. Today, when the prosecution acknowledges that there is insufficient evidence to continue the proceedings, we will not accept that everything ends as if nothing happened,” the students said.
They emphasised that the Serbian Constitution and laws should have protected their colleagues from the outset, arguing that the legality of evidence must never depend on the political circumstances or who is in power.
The students also called for judicial independence, saying courts must make decisions based on the law rather than pressure from politicians and media outlets that, in their view, had effectively declared their colleagues guilty before the judicial process was completed.
They demanded accountability for what they described as 18 months of public targeting, damage to their colleagues’ reputations and the fear experienced by the accused students and their families.
“We are not asking the court for mercy. We are demanding justice. Justice for the nine students and for all our colleagues who unjustly found themselves in the dock under the former regime,” the statement added.
The student movement further warned that the withdrawal of the indictment proposal did not absolve those involved in the alleged persecution of responsibility.
“Eighteen months of their lives cannot be erased with a single decision. Our colleagues should not have had to wait for the law to begin protecting them. They deserve justice, and we will not give up on it,” the statement concluded.
