Protests and road blockades across Serbia on Friday evening

Protesters shut down roads and intersections in cities like Cacak, Kraljevo, Gornji Milanovac, Nis, Novi Sad, Valjevo, Pancevo, Subotica, Novi Pazar, Uzice, and many other locations. In Pancevo, residents blocked the Southern Zone, home to major industrial facilities like the NIS Refinery, Azotara, and Petrohemija. The main Uzice-Zlatibor road, a key route toward Montenegro, was also barricaded.

Throughout the day, police detained students, professors, other citizens, and even minors.

MP Miroslav Aleksic told N1 that Mihajlo Maletic, a councilor for the People’s Movement of Serbia in Belgrade’s Stari Grad municipality, was arrested Friday by the Unit for Securing Specific Facilities and Persons.

In downtown Belgrade, two students, Ognjen and Igor, were detained during the protests. Ognjen, a medical student, spoke to N1 after his release from misdemeanor court, explaining that plainclothes police officers cited his “suspicious behavior” as the reason for his detention. He believes they targeted him for shouting to clear a path for an ambulance.

In another incident in Belgrade, a man was detained by an individual who refused to show identification, despite demands from bystanders and a lawyer present at the scene. The man, a clarinet professor, was reportedly arrested for allegedly knocking over a garbage container, according to witnesses.

A female civil engineering student in Belgrade reported that three men “kidnapped” a young man in central in the afternoon, forcing him into an unmarked Audi without license plates and driving off to an unknown location.