Lawyer Of The “Novi Sad Group”: The Purpose Of The Pardon Is To Stop Talk About SNS Criminals

Željko Koçiç, one of the defense lawyers of the activists accused in the so-called case of the “Novi Sad twelve” — accused of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order — reacted tonight after President Aleksandar Vučić’s pardon decision, as the newspaper Danas reports.

Koçiç wrote in an Instagram post that the purpose of the pardon is for the media to talk about the “Novi Sad twelve” instead of the SNS criminals whom Vučić pardoned “in unknown numbers”.

Vučić announced tonight, shortly before resigning from the office of president, that he pardoned 49 people, including 12 from the Novi Sad group led by Mila Pajiç and 11 from the other side, who attacked the protesters.

According to Koçiç, the decision denied his clients — Sërxhan Xhuriç, Lado Jovoviç, Anja Pituliç and others — the right to defense, violated the presumption of innocence in public and took away their opportunity for the court to prove that they had committed no criminal offense and that they had been held in pre-trial detention for seven months without legal basis.

He claims that the only evidence — a BIA audio recording, which he calls “montaged” — should be thrown out as illegally obtained evidence and that the entire professional public knows that such material cannot be used as evidence. He says the BIA gave the illegal recording to “Informer” and national-frequency televisions to politically discredit the persons allegedly heard on it, as well as the student movement.

He closed the reaction by saying that citizens will not forget Banjska, the wiretapping of students and activists or the “sound cannon”, and that his clients will seek justice in court “on 26.10.2026 in a free Serbia”.