SAJ Chief Igor Zmiric Detained Over Garage Torture Case

Nine people, among them the commander of the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit (SAJ) Igor Zmiric, were detained on Wednesday evening for up to 48 hours on suspicion of abusing and torturing students in the Serbian Government garage in August 2025. The detention order was issued by officers of the Internal Control Sector of the Interior Ministry (MUP), on the instruction of a public prosecutor from the First Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade. It is the first arrest in the “Garage” case.

In its statement, the ministry gives initials and birth years rather than names. According to it, those detained are I. Z. (1979), B. J. (1978), D. V. (1978), J. O. (1983), V. L. (1978), N. D. (1976), N. F. (1973) and Z. V. (1972), all police officers, along with a civilian, M. V. (1978), who was a police officer at the time of the events. Media report that the first set of initials belongs to Zmiric, and Srpskainfo names him in full. All of them are suspects, not convicts: a decision to detain someone is not a verdict.

What are the suspects accused of?

They are suspected of abuse and torture, committed jointly, as members of the Unit for the Protection of Certain Persons and Facilities (JZO). The MUP describes the event this way:

The offense was committed in such a way that the suspects, on August 14-15, 2025, from about 10:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. in Belgrade, in the garage of the Government of the Republic of Serbia building in Nemanjina Street, used force and threats to inflict great pain and severe suffering on a number of injured persons, with the aim of obtaining information from them, intimidating them and punishing them unlawfully

The ministry has released neither the number nor the names of the injured parties. All those detained will be brought before the on-duty prosecutor for questioning within the legal deadline.

The daily Danas, citing several sources in the MUP, reports that Zmiric’s deputy was also taken in. Asked by the newsroom, the MUP replied that only the prosecutor’s office handling the case could have such information, so the ministry has not confirmed that detail. The descriptions differ, the total does not: the MUP speaks of eight police officers and one former officer, KRIK of Zmiric, seven serving officers and one former officer, and Danas of Zmiric, his deputy and seven others. Every account adds up to nine people.

What happened in Nemanjina Street?

The case is tied to Nikolina Sindjelic, a student at the Faculty of Political Sciences. Right after the events, on August 15, 2025, she told N1 that she and her colleague Stevan Zdravkovic were seized by JZO members, police and masked men as they were returning from a protest along Nemanjina Street. They were taken into the Government garage, where, she said, they had to lie on the floor and look down. They spent about three hours in the garage, then about two hours at a police station in Majke Jevrosime Street.

Sindjelic said at the time that JZO commander Marko Kricak slapped her, struck her head against a wall and threatened her:

He kept saying he would strip me and rape me in front of everyone

According to KRIK, Kricak was arrested a few days ago, but in a separate case, Senjak, on suspicion of abusing his position in a murder investigation. Sindjelic named Zmiric in her criminal complaint. She had earlier described him to Nova.rs with the words: “He behaved extremely cruelly.” The same outlet reported in November 2025 that Zmiric, until then deputy commander of the JZO, had been appointed SAJ commander.

What led up to the arrest?

Al Jazeera Balkans reports that in late August 2025 the police answered a prosecutor’s request by saying that surveillance camera footage from the garage does not exist because it is deleted automatically. The same outlet writes that the Supreme Public Prosecutor issued a mandatory instruction for urgent action in the case on Monday, November 2.

After news of the arrest broke, Sindjelic told the FoNet agency that she expects a wider proceeding:

I hope that everyone who took part in it will be held responsible, precisely because my colleague Dusan was also in that torture.

She added that she hopes the people who mistreated the other students will be identified:

I hope work will also be done on identifying the people who mistreated them too.

Zmiric’s name was already linked in public to a KRIK investigation from February 2026, which reported that he was becoming the owner of a villa in the Avalske Doline neighborhood worth more than 400,000 euros. The investor, Nenad Sekularac, then confirmed to KRIK that he is building the villa for him and is “helping” him.

According to the MUP, the suspects will be brought before the competent prosecutor’s office within the legal deadline.