Military analyst charged over sound cannon claims, sought after leaving Serbia

Radić himself has offered an explanation for his departure. In a written statement to the Beta news agency on 26 June 2026, he said he left the country after the pro-government channel Informer broadcast surveillance footage of him being followed - including footage of his minor daughter, who was about to turn 16. He said he had expected pressure from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party and the Military Security Agency (VBA), but not an operation involving this many people, backed by media coverage. He argued the authorities wanted to remove him from public life as a government critic with military connections, and that the sound cannon story gave them a pretext; he suggested he may have been meant to leave, since detaining him over "information" would look like harassment of a journalist, whereas he had heard from security-sector contacts that "one or more thugs" may have been planned to intercept him on the street, with Informer then describing them as "justice-loving citizens."

He added that he would not be surprised if, once his devices were examined, he were accused of "preparing a coup, espionage for at least three services, and extremism" - a prediction that anticipates the charges prosecutors have now actually filed. He also said this was not the first time he had felt targeted by the VBA, describing years of surveillance that intensified after a February 2025 interview he gave to Radar about the agency.

The departure came amid a broader wave of prosecutorial activity: on 19 June 2026, VJT Beograd said it suspected students had "planned a simulation" of the sound cannon at the 15 March protest and ordered information-gathering interviews with everyone who had publicly claimed the device was used. Radić's apartment was searched on 22 June; a lawyer and deputy president of LSV - Vojvođani, Aleksandar Olenik, was called in for questioning on 24 June; the editor-in-chief of the portal Srbin.info, Dejan Zlatanović, was questioned on 23 June about his reporting on the 15 March protest; and Beta's editor-in-chief, Vojkan Kostić, was called in on suspicion of preparing acts against the constitutional order and security of Serbia, on the same day Radić's apartment was searched.

Prosecutors say Radić is suspected of using contacts with unnamed persons employed in state institutions to gather information of varying degrees of secrecy, and in that way came into unauthorized possession of classified data marked "strictly confidential," "confidential" and "internal." Separately - and more directly tied to the sound cannon case - they allege that from 15 March 2025 onward he publicly presented as established fact information he did not actually have, with intent, they say, to endanger the constitutional order and security of the state.

Prosecutors' account of Radić's communications, reconstructed from his seized phone, is built almost entirely on private chats and is presented from the prosecution's side only - Radić has not responded publicly since leaving the country. According to that account, he first raised the sound cannon claim on the evening of 15 March 2025, in a Signal exchange with an N1 journalist identified only by the initials S.K. She had sent him a link to an X post from an account called "Alef Pendule," showing video from Kralja Milana street and asking him to look at the 32nd second; less than half an hour later, Radić told her a US-made non-lethal "sound weapon" had been used "for a brutal display of force and proof of arrogance." N1 published the claim within the hour - the first media report of a sound cannon at the protest - first online, then on its evening show.

Prosecutors say Radić's account then began to shift. The same evening, in a Viber group with an RTS journalist (G.J.) and a Beta agency editor (V.K.), the journalist wrote that "they used a sound cannon, NATO classification: sonic weapon," and Radić confirmed it. In parallel, on Telegram, a Russian contact identified as V.O. told him that he had used a "sound cannon" against Somali pirates in 2014 and that "it's no good" - the first mention, prosecutors say, of the term "infrasound" in connection with the case; Radić repeated that term in the Viber group shortly after midnight. When a photograph of an alleged device in front of the National Assembly began circulating days later, Radić wrote, contradicting his own earlier claims, that "this is PSY OPS" - a psychological operation. He had not been in Kralja Milana street during the protest, but continued asserting publicly that he had information a banned device was used, framing it - per the indictment - as proof the authorities had "shot at the people." He told a Nedeljnik journalist (A.Ć.) on Facebook that he knew which device had been used, and separately clashed with the RTS journalist, who had told him he didn't want to speculate and "ruin his integrity" on air; Radić replied that he could ruin his own, since he had an "ideological basis" for fighting for the truth.

Prosecutors also cite a private falling-out over the technical claim. Between 15 and 20 March, Radić discussed the device over Facebook with a Serbian Army lieutenant colonel and pilot (D.B.), at one point suggesting the sound cannon had been positioned at the Palata Albanija building - which the pilot said was impossible, given the device's range of up to 600 metres - and, after the pilot told him there had "definitely" been no sound at all, proposing it might instead have been a device called "Vortex," which the pilot also disputed. In a separate Signal group with drama-academy (FDU) students identified as A.M. and M.M., Radić claimed the device was a "Vortex cannon 1000Xi" emitting infrasound; student M.M. pushed back, citing analysis from PhD candidates and professors that the device "must be audible" and cannot generate infrasound, and, after Radić shared an official statement from the First Basic Public Prosecutor's Office with the group, replied that the statement was "their trick" - technically accurate, since the device used was not a sound cannon at all but a different kind of device, of which sound was only a side effect. On 26 March 2025, the FDU students published a video of their own, prosecutors say, attempting to correct the public record from "sound cannon" to an "infrasound weapon."

The same chronology confirms that Radić discussed the alleged sound cannon with MP Zdravko Ponoš, who was separately questioned by police over his own tweet on the matter on 1 July 2026. Asked by Ponoš on 16 March 2025 who had "activated the cannon," Radić replied that he had no sources but suspected "Vulin's paramilitary group."