Postponement of Serbian Activists’ Subversion Trial ‘Absurd’, Lawyer Says

A Serbian court has once again postponed the opening of the trial of 12 activists accused of plotting the overthrow of the authorities ahead of a mass protest in Belgrade in March 2025.A man films protesters during a student-led rally in Belgrade, 15 March 2025. Photo: EPA/ANDREJ CUKIC. The Higher Court in Serbia’s second city Novi Sad has again postponed the trial of the “Novi Sad 12” – 12 activists who are accused of plotting subversion ahead of a anti-government rally in the capital Belgrade last March amid an ongoing student-led mass protest campaign. The accused – five former activists of the opposition Movement of Free Citizens, PSG, and seven members of the activist group Students Against Authoritarian Rule, STAV – are charged with “preparing an attack on Serbia’s constitutional order” and calling for the violent overthrow of the authorities. The charges arise from discussions between the indictees that were recorded at a meeting ahead of the March 2025 rally, which became the largest in Serbian history. The hearing has been postponed from September 4 to October 30 because an assessment of defendant Lazar Dinic’s fitness to stand trial has not been completed, after Dinic failed to attend a hearing in May, which caused the first postponement. But Mihailo Pavlovic, the lawyer for one of the defendants, Mila Pajic, told BIRN that there were not sufficient grounds to postpone the hearing, and that the court decision was “completely nonsensical and irrelevant” and represented “the unnecessary prolonging of the proceedings”. Six of the defendants who are members of STAV have been in exile since March 2025, are will be tried in absentia. Serbia sought international arrest warrants for them, but Interpol declined to issue them in July, concluding that the case was political in nature. In the meantime, proceedings to confiscate their travel documents were also initiated but were later discontinued after the prosecutor withdrew the request, Pavlovic told BIRN. “We are now in an absurd situation: these people are outside the country and detention orders against them remain in force, while at the same time the prosecutor himself has withdrawn the request to have their passports confiscated,” he said.