Serbian authorities used an illegal sonic weapon against a silent vigil at the March 15, 2025 Belgrade protest
Where the evidence lands: UnprovenThat on March 15, 2025, during a silent vigil at a mass anti-government protest in Belgrade, Serbian security forces deliberately deployed a directional acoustic or 'sonic' weapon (an LRAD sound cannon or a comparable device) against the crowd, producing the sudden sound, the physical symptoms attendees reported, and the panicked surge that followed.
Believed by: Widely alleged by opposition figures, Serbian rights groups, and a petition signed by more than half a million people
The full story
The silence that broke
On the evening of 15 March 2025, one of the largest crowds in modern Serbian history filled central Belgrade. By most estimates around 300,000 people had come for an anti-government, anti-corruption demonstration, the culmination of months of protest that began when a concrete canopy at the newly renovated railway station in Novi Sad collapsed the previous November, killing fifteen people. At about seven o'clock the enormous crowd went quiet for a planned fifteen-minute silence to honor the dead.
The silence did not last. Partway through, a loud, jarring sound tore down a stretch of Kralja Milana Boulevard, and within seconds the densely packed crowd split and surged toward the sidewalks. The panic is not in dispute; it was filmed from many angles, and the sudden parting of a still crowd is visible in the footage. What set it off is the whole question. One witness described a noise “like some powerful machine hurtling up from behind.” Others reached for comparisons that did not match each other: the roar of a Formula One car, a low-flying airplane, an MRI machine, at first even an emergency vehicle or a car crash. Many reported racing hearts, trembling, nausea, ringing ears, and a strange wave of heat or pressure.
Almost immediately, opposition politicians and rights groups gave the sound a name: an illegal acoustic weapon, most likely a Long-Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, turned on peaceful demonstrators. The government denied it just as fast. More than a year later, the two accounts have not been reconciled, and this file rates the specific allegation, that a sonic weapon was deliberately deployed, as unproven: not shown to be true, and not shown to be false.
The case that a weapon was fired
The strongest version of the allegation does not rest on feeling alone. Start with means. After first denying the state even possessed such equipment, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic acknowledged that Serbian police had bought LRAD units from the United States in 2021. The devices were in the country and in police hands; the only claim in dispute is whether one was used. An initial denial later contradicted by an admission is, at a minimum, a reason not to take the official account at face value.
Then there is the scale and texture of the accounts. A coalition of six NGOs collected roughly 500 citizen testimonies, and the audio-forensics nonprofit Earshot aggregated more than 3,000 written statements alongside earwitness interviews with people positioned along the boulevard. In its June 2025 report, Earshot analyzed audio from nineteen videos and concluded that it is “highly likely” the protesters were subjected to a targeted attack by a highly directional acoustic weapon, naming candidates such as the LRAD 450XL or an experimental vortex ring gun that fires doughnut-shaped pulses of air. That is an independent group reaching an incriminating conclusion from the physical record, not an activist slogan.
Finally, institutions took the claim seriously enough to act. The European Court of Human Rights issued an interim measure ordering Serbia to prevent any crowd-control use of sound devices, the first time acoustic weapons have featured in such an order, and a petition demanding an independent international investigation gathered more than half a million signatures. None of this proves a weapon was fired. All of it explains why so many are convinced one was.
The case for the denial, and the mundane readings
The other side of the ledger is not empty either. The clearest point in the government's favor comes from an unlikely source: Genasys, the California company that manufactures LRAD devices. On 19 March it said that the audio and video evidence it had reviewed did not support the use of an LRAD during the incident. A manufacturer has little obvious motive to shield a foreign police force, and it knows better than anyone what its own product sounds like, which makes its skeptical read harder to wave away than an official denial.
The Serbian state, for its part, has denied the allegation at every level: the Interior Ministry, the security service, the police, the prime minister, and President Aleksandar Vucic. Vucic went further, saying that experts from Russia's FSB, invited to investigate, had concluded the police's acoustic devices were not used, and suggesting the panic was staged by unidentified people in the crowd. Security services also floated a purely mundane trigger: that the stampede began when student stewards running security took off their yellow vests and started running, and the crowd, primed and anxious, ran with them.
Each mundane reading has some plausibility. A loud noise of ordinary origin, a vehicle, a mechanical failure, even feedback, can set a packed and nervous crowd moving, and mass panic is famously self-amplifying: once people run, others run because people are running, no weapon required. The trouble is that none of these explanations has been demonstrated to be what actually happened, and the state's most emphatic clearance came from the FSB, an intelligence arm of a close ally, on behalf of the very government accused. That is not the disinterested inquiry the situation calls for.
What no one has actually established
Strip the case to its core and a hard fact emerges: more than a year on, no neutral body with real access has determined what produced the sound. The evidence that exists is genuinely contradictory. Earshot, working from the crowd's own recordings and testimony, calls an acoustic attack highly likely. Genasys, working from similar material, says the evidence does not support LRAD use. Both cannot be right, and no authoritative investigation has weighed the two against each other with the scene, the police logs, and the devices themselves in hand.
The European Court of Human Rights was careful about exactly this. Its interim measure obliges Serbia to prevent future crowd-control use of sound devices and to investigate the allegations, but the Court stated plainly that it was taking no position on whether such a weapon had in fact been used on 15 March. A duty to investigate is not a finding of what happened. And the conditions for a credible investigation have if anything worsened: Serbian authorities have resisted outside inquiry, and prosecutors have moved against people who publicly alleged a sonic attack, including a criminal complaint against a military analyst. Evidence and willing witnesses do not improve with time, pressure, and the threat of prosecution.
Why the sound became a Rorschach test
An unexplained, frightening event lands on prepared ground, and everyone reads it through what they already believe. To protesters who had watched a state they consider corrupt and unaccountable dismiss their grievances for months, a hidden weapon fired at a silent vigil is the story that fits: proof, felt in the body, of a government willing to hurt its own citizens and then lie about it. The bodily symptoms make the belief especially durable, because a racing heart and ringing ears feel like evidence in a way a fact-check never can, even when panic alone can produce them.
To the government and its supporters, the same event is a provocation staged to smear the state, and the official denial is simply the truth under attack. Both camps can point to real support, an independent “highly likely,” a manufacturer's “not supported,” a court order, a foreign intelligence report, and each treats the evidence cutting the other way as compromised. That is the signature of a genuinely underdetermined case: not that one side has the facts and the other has a fantasy, but that the facts on the table are thin enough, and mistrust deep enough, that a person's prior conviction does most of the work of deciding what happened.
Where the evidence lands
On the specific claim, that Serbian forces deliberately fired a sonic weapon at the crowd on 15 March 2025, the honest verdict is unproven. The documented record is solid at its center and empty at the point that matters most. A real crowd, a real and sudden panic, thousands of real reports of a violent sound and strange physical effects: all of that is well attested. So is the state's possession of LRAD devices, its shifting initial account, an independent group's “highly likely” finding, the manufacturer's contrary read, a Russian report clearing the police, and a European court order that pointedly declines to say a weapon was used.
What is missing is the thing that would settle it: a credible, independent forensic investigation, with access to the scene and the equipment, that could say what made the sound. Until that exists, the responsible position is neither to assert that a sonic weapon was fired nor to declare that it was not, but to hold both the documented panic and the unresolved cause in view at once, and to treat the mystery as what it is, still open.
What's still unexplained
- What actually produced the sound has never been established by a neutral forensic body with access to the scene, the crowd audio, and the police's own devices. The competing analyses, Earshot on one side, the manufacturer and the FSB on the other, cannot both be right, and no independent investigation has adjudicated between them.
- If it was not a weapon, what was it? The mundane explanations on offer (a stampede touched off by student stewards removing their vests and running, a passing vehicle, mass panic feeding on itself) are plausible but have not been demonstrated to have caused the specific sound thousands describe, leaving a real gap.
- Would a genuinely independent inquiry even be possible now? Serbia has resisted outside investigation, launched prosecutions of those alleging a sonic attack, and leaned on an allied intelligence service, so the physical and testimonial evidence may degrade before any impartial body can weigh it.
Point by point
The claim: Thousands of people felt a violent, unnatural sound and pressure wave, which points to a directed acoustic weapon.
What the record shows: The sudden surge is real and captured on many videos, and the volume of reports is large: a group of six NGOs logged around 500 citizen testimonies, and Earshot aggregated more than 3,000 written accounts. But the descriptions vary widely by location: a Formula One roar to some, a low-flying airplane or an MRI machine to others, an emergency vehicle or a car crash to still others. Consistent panic and inconsistent descriptions are compatible with a directed weapon, but also with a loud, confusing sound of another origin amplified by a crowd already braced for danger.
The claim: The police owned LRAD sound cannons, so they had the means, and their shifting story is suspicious.
What the record shows: Officials did first deny possessing such devices, then Interior Minister Ivica Dacic confirmed LRAD units were purchased from the U.S. in 2021. Possession and an initial denial are real and reasonably raise suspicion. They do not establish use: having a device present at a rally is not evidence it was fired, and police say the units were meant for voice announcements.
The claim: An independent forensic analysis found an acoustic-weapon attack 'highly likely,' which supports the allegation.
What the record shows: Earshot's June 2025 report reaches that conclusion and floats specific candidates, an LRAD 450XL or an experimental vortex ring gun. It is a serious independent effort. It is also a probabilistic finding built largely on witness audio and testimony rather than a recovered device or an admitted deployment, and it directly conflicts with the manufacturer's read of the same kind of evidence.
The claim: The government's denial, and the Russian FSB report clearing it, settle that no weapon was used.
What the record shows: Vucic cited an FSB report concluding the police's acoustic devices were not used and implying the incident was staged by 'black-clad' provocateurs. But the FSB is neither neutral nor independent, and the Serbian government is the party under accusation; a denial from the accused and a report from a close ally are not an impartial investigation. Genasys, the manufacturer, separately said the evidence did not support LRAD use, a more disinterested view but still not a full forensic inquiry with access to the scene and the devices.
The claim: The Council of Europe's top court intervened, which shows an acoustic attack occurred.
What the record shows: The European Court of Human Rights did issue an interim measure ordering Serbia to prevent crowd-control use of sound devices, a notable first for acoustic weapons. But the Court expressly said the measure implies no finding that any such weapon was used on March 15; it obliges the state to prevent a future harm and to investigate the allegations, not a ruling that the event happened as alleged.
Timeline
- 2024-11-01A concrete canopy at the newly renovated railway station in Novi Sad collapses, killing 15 people (a death later rose to 16). Blamed on corruption and shoddy oversight, the disaster ignites months of mass anti-government protests across Serbia.
- 2025-03-15An estimated 300,000 people gather in Belgrade for one of the country's largest-ever demonstrations. At around 7 p.m. the crowd falls into a planned 15-minute silence to honor the Novi Sad dead.
- 2025-03-15Mid-silence, a loud, jarring sound sweeps a section of Kralja Milana Boulevard. The densely packed crowd parts and surges toward the sidewalks in seconds. Attendees report fear, racing hearts, trembling, nausea, and a sensation of heat or pressure.
- 2025-03-17Opposition figures and rights groups allege an LRAD or similar acoustic weapon was fired at the crowd, a use that would be unlawful in Serbia. Calls mount for an independent investigation.
- 2025-03-19Genasys, the U.S. maker of LRAD devices, states that the audio and video reviewed so far does not support the use of an LRAD during the March 15 incident.
- 2025-03After first denying the state possessed such devices, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic acknowledges police bought LRAD units from the United States in 2021, insisting they were acquired only to relay verbal messages and were not used against protesters.
- 2025-04President Aleksandar Vucic says Russia's FSB, invited to help investigate, concluded the police's acoustic devices were not used, and suggests the panic was staged. He also says U.S. FBI investigators would come; the U.S. Justice Department does not comment.
- 2025-04-29The European Court of Human Rights issues an interim measure in Dorovic and Others v. Serbia, telling the state to prevent any crowd-control use of sound devices. The Court stresses it takes no position on whether a weapon was actually used on March 15.
- 2025-06Earshot, a UK audio-forensics nonprofit, publishes an investigation drawing on 19 videos, thousands of written accounts, and earwitness interviews, and concludes it is 'highly likely' the crowd was hit by a highly directional acoustic weapon.
Unproven. A real, video-documented panic swept a silent crowd of hundreds of thousands on March 15, 2025, and thousands reported a strange, violent sound. Beyond that the evidence is genuinely split: the government, the device's manufacturer, and a Russian FSB report say no acoustic weapon was used, while an independent audio-forensics group judged an attack 'highly likely.' No credible, independent investigation with full access has resolved what happened, so the specific claim that a sonic weapon was deliberately deployed remains unproven.
Reviewed by The Conspiratory Editors · Last reviewed July 24, 2026 · How we rate
Sources
- 1.'Sonic Weapon' Mystery Unsolved, One Year After Panic at Serbian Protest, Balkan Insight (2026)
- 2.Government denies using 'sonic cannon' at Serbia protests, BBC News (2025)
- 3.Calls in Serbia for independent investigation into claims of a sonic device attack at peaceful protest, CNN (2025)
- 4.'Like a sound from hell:' Was an illegal sonic weapon used on protesters in Serbia?, NPR (2025)
- 5.Serbia Says Russian Investigators Found That Sonic Devices Were Not Used in Belgrade Protests, Associated Press (via U.S. News & World Report) (2025)
- 6.Sonic Attack on a Silent Vigil, Earshot (2025)
- 7.ECtHR grants interim measure concerning Serbia: Controversies in the possible use of sonic weapons against protesters, EJIL: Talk! (2025)
- 8.Vucic announces that experts from Russian FSB arrived to investigate the use of a sonic weapon, European Western Balkans (2025)
- 9.Guest post: Bill Boothby on 'Are sonic weapons legal?', Duke University, Lawfire (2025)
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