Category: Violence against citizens
Period: from 5 Sep 2025
Outcome: No one investigated (as of 28 Oct 2026)
On the night of 5 to 6 September 2025, after police broke up a protest, rector Dejan Madić entered the Rectorate of the University of Novi Sad together with the police. According to minister Ivica Dačić, the police went in at the rector's invitation and checked the IDs of 142 people who had taken shelter inside; they were held in the amphitheatre for hours, and the police stayed in the building until 1 October. Free University is demanding the rector's resignation and a prosecutor's investigation, and people who were in the Rectorate have reportedly received misdemeanour summonses. Madić has not resigned.
After the police operation outside the Faculty of Philosophy, covered in a separate case, police surrounded the Rectorate building on the night of 5 to 6 September 2025, where students, citizens and medical workers had taken shelter. Police entered the building together with Rector Dejan Madić; around fifty members of the Gendarmerie went in.
Minister Ivica Dačić said the rector had called the police at around half past midnight, and that the police entered the building after consulting the prosecutor's office.
The people inside the building were taken to a lecture hall, where police checked their IDs; Dačić said 142 people had been found there. They were released in groups after 2.30 am, and several students, among them members of the Blokada.info editorial team, were detained. Dačić said eight people were detained because, as he put it, tear gas, body armour and a radio set were found on them.
Footage published by students shows a masked police officer snatching a phone from a young person. Professor Vladan Joler, who was inside, says they were surrounded by armed men and that female students were crying.
Rector Madić told 021.rs that there was no violence in the Rectorate, that nobody laid a finger on anyone and that he stayed in the building all night. He explained the entry by pointing to the great damage the university was suffering because the Rectorate had been under blockade since December.
Dačić said the police respond when called by the competent authority and that how the university will function is not a matter for the police.
The police remained in the Rectorate over the following weeks. Staff were let into the rector's meeting on 8 September from a list held by the police, while students were not allowed in. Students' personal belongings and the Blokada.info editorial team's equipment also remained in the building; the rector did not answer N1's question about why the police were still there.
The University of Novi Sad announced on 3 October that the police had left the building on 1 October.
Free University announced in March 2026 that several dozen citizens, students and staff had received summonses to the Misdemeanour Court over the events of 5 September. They are allegedly charged with disturbing public order and endangering property, and the network calls this an attempt at collective intimidation. A rally in support was scheduled outside the Misdemeanour Court for 7 April.
On 26 October 2026, the Free University gave Rector Madić 72 hours to resign, citing among other things his decision to let the police into the Rectorate. Two days later it demanded that responsibility be established urgently and that the prosecutor's office examine whether criminal offences had been committed. On 29 October, when the deadline expired, it announced legal action and called on the deans to convene a session on his dismissal. Madić did not resign and did not respond to questions from N1.