The Fall of Belgrade’s Enforcers

When the police chief long tasked with protecting the state ends up in handcuffs, the official script rarely permits any admission of political panic. Belgrade’s chief prosecutor was quick to insist that the arrest of Marko Kricak had absolutely nothing to do with the electoral earthquake that ended Aleksandar Vucic’s fourteen-year reign just a week earlier. It is a remarkably convenient coincidence for a regime accustomed to survival through institutional theatricality.

Kricak, the 42-year-old head of Serbia’s criminal police directorate, was taken into custody on Sunday alongside Bosko Sekulovic, the police commander responsible for fighting organized crime. According to Belgrade Chief Prosecutor Nenad Stefanovic, the two stand accused of abusing their positions and causing severe harm to the rights of Veselin Milic, Belgrade’s former police chief.

The internal warfare reading of these arrests is difficult to ignore. Milic was himself arrested back in May for failing to report the gangland murder of a suspected criminal figure in a Belgrade restaurant and for assisting the killer. From behind bars, Milic initiated legal action against Kricak and Sekulovic, accusing them of feeding prosecutors incomplete and false evidence.

For years, Kricak was regarded as a loyalist to the Vucic administration. Student groups repeatedly accused his police apparatus of brutal repression during the widespread street demonstrations that eventually unseated Vucic's right-wing Serbian Progressive Party. Following the historic victory of the student-backed movement on October 25, activists had explicitly demanded the removal of Kricak alongside other security chiefs.

Those protests had gained irreversible momentum after the Novi Sad railway station canopy collapse, which killed sixteen people two years ago and triggered the resignation of Prime Minister Milos Vucevic in January 2025. Vucic himself stepped down from the presidency in September to lead his party's list, ultimately failing to secure another victory.

Yet, prosecutors insist the timing is purely coincidental. This arrest has no link with the result of the legislative elections, Stefanovic asserted to journalists.

For a state that has long drifted in political limbo while attempting to project strength through administrative control, the spectacle of top commanders turning on each other as the old political order collapses is telling. Serbia's security machinery may claim it is merely cleaning house, but the sudden eagerness to enforce accountability arrives with remarkable timing.

Written by Sandy van Dongen sandy.vandongen@alpineweekly.com