The International Criminal Court at the Hague has been on an indictment spree lately. We still recall vividly the Court’s bold reinterpretation of “crime against humanity” to encompass the rescue and sheltering on Russian territory of children and young adults from the Donbas. What impressed most normal observers as a praiseworthy wartime humanitarian gesture par excellence was the pretext for probably the most preposterous of the politically motivated indictments that the ICC had ever issued.
The most recent of such indictments, the illegal abduction and forced transfer to the Hague of the former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, was another high handed example of the Court’s indictment rampage.
But it so happens that ICC need not scour the world from Ukraine to Asia in search of contrived cases to rationalise its existence. A few days ago what appears to be a genuine violation of international humanitarian law, to be exact a potential crime against humanity, was detected just a convenient two-hour flight from the Hague, in Belgrade, Serbia. ICC judges and prosecutors could not possibly have missed it if they watch television. It was all over the global media in the form of disturbing, widely disseminated images and the portrayal of appalling details that should have shocked their juridical and human sensibilities. But whether they will ever receive the signal to react to what they must already be aware of and to start investigating it and if warranted indicting, that is quite another matter. For that we must hold our breath.
The underlying facts, the majority of them undisputed, are as follows. On Saturday, 15 March, an enormous rally was held in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It was convoked to underscore discontent with the Serbian authorities’ failure to identify and prosecute the culprits involved in the lethal collapse of a concrete canopy at the recently “reconstructed” railroad station in the city of Novi Sad, which crushed to death sixteen innocent passers-by. It is suspected by the Serbian public that the lethal incident was just the tip of the official corruption iceberg. There is an unshakable conviction in Serbia that the pervasiveness of corruption has led to the embezzlement of vast quantities of public funds in unsupervised sweetheart deals between crooked functionaries and unscrupulous contractors who had developed a system for sharing the spoils of shabbily executed public works projects undertaken at grossly inflated prices. The canopy collapse was just one example of such corrupt practices and merely the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Those are, of course, internal political issues that should be of no more than passing concern to international judicial organs. What occurred to the assembled crowd later that evening, however, just as the vast throng was standing in silence to pay its respects to the Novi Sad victims, should have attracted the urgent attention of ICC prosecutors if they retain an iota of professional integrity. Suddenly and without the slightest warning the crowd were literally swept off their feet by a rumbling noise followed by a painful and debilitating sensation which hundreds of those present later reported in almost identical terms. Whatever had caused this disruption of the respectful silence maintained by peacefully assembled citizens in one of the principal thoroughfares of central Belgrade, in addition to provoking intense fear and a sense of panic it also caused amongst those present widespread nausea, eardrum rupture, and failure of pacemaker devices. It seems that only the composure and quick thinking of rally organisers prevented the incident from turning into a stampede with unfathomable, possibly deadly consequences, and widespread injuries on an even greater scale. They managed to take control of the situation and directed the crowd to disperse calmly.
During the past week, ordinary Serbs and acoustics experts have been speculating about the nature of the attack to which the crowd were evidently subjected. Whilst within hours and quite unsurprisingly the Serbian public prosecutor’s office dismissed the occurrence and the symptoms subsequently complained of as a product of mass hallucination, the attention of more objective analysts has turned to the documented effects of such contraptions as the military grade sound weapon LRAD [Long range acoustic device] and other similar readily available high frequency crowd control devices. They are known to impact their targets physically and psychologically in the manner observed in the streets of Belgrade on 15 March.
The Serbian government initially denied categorically that it possessed acoustic or any other type of crowd control devices or that it had used anything of the sort against the protesters. That assertion very quickly fell apart, however, as opposition parliament members made public purchase orders for precisely such devices and a photograph emerged of a police vehicle with such a device mounted on it. It was parked behind the National Assembly building and in close proximity to a large concentration of protesters. It should be noted that the use of such crowd control devices is not allowed under Serbian law and that reputable legal opinion has held that those devices amount to a prohibited weapon when used on the civilian population.
Purchase orders for Acoustic guns. Proof that the Serbian government lied that it did not possess them
The legal issue, therefore, concerns the status of the coercive mass dispersal event which occurred on 15 March, 2025, in Belgrade, Serbia, in the context of Article 7 (1) (k) of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, which references the Crime against humanity of other inhumane acts. In the said Article, such acts are described more specifically as “1. The perpetrator inflicted great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health, by means of an inhumane act.” The Rome Treaty under which ICC was established, in Article 7, specifies Crimes against humanity as one of the categories of culpable acts over which it has jurisdiction.
Whilst there is no record of ICC chambers pronouncing on a matter involving mass harmful effects produced by the use against civilians of sound, acoustic, or other similar types of devices or weapons, there is pertinent and helpful jurisprudence in the State of New York from which legal guidance can be derived. Note that in the Introduction to the ICC Statute section on Crimes against humanity it is stated that Article 7 pertains to “conduct which is impermissible under generally applicable international law, as recognized by the principal legal systems of the world.” The Appellate Court of the State of New York is indisputably a respectable legal jurisdiction and fully satisfies the above criterion.
The New York case stemmed from a 2014 protest where the New York Police Department used LRAD acoustic devices to disperse the crowd without engaging in physical contact. Many of the protesters, including journalists who were present to cover the event, subsequently complained of “pain, ringing in their ears, and migraines that lasted for days afterwards.” Protesters in Belgrade have complained of suffering the same or similar after-effects. Following extensive litigation, the State of New York 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal found in favor of the injured plaintiffs, rejecting the defendant Police Department’s claim that LRAD “is not an instrumentality of force but a communication device.” The panel ruled that, on the contrary, “this is force, and the kind that could be used excessively,” specifying that “even though sound waves are a novel method for deploying force, the effect of an LRAD’s area denial function is familiar: pain and incapacitation.”
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the defendant’s appeal, thus implicitly upholding the Appellate Court’s finding.
New York City was obliged to settle and pay the plaintiffs $748,000 in damages for their pain and suffering following the illicit use of what the court qualified as an acoustic weapon and plaintiff’s attorney Gideon Oliver pointedly described as “an area-of-effect weapon … when the police use it, it’s not as if they’re just targeting one person. It’s indiscriminate like teargas.”
In terms of the ICC Statute as it pertains to crimes against humanity, in addition to the specific injuries inflicted, the operative expression is “indiscriminate.” Targeted to be harmed both in New York and in Belgrade was an entire group of civilians occupying a particular space, without regard for the personal responsibility of individuals of whom it was composed.
The question that now needs to be considered is whether the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over a potential violation of its Statute that may have occurred in Serbia. The answer is that, yes, it does because Serbia is a state-party to the Treaty of Rome. Furthermore, the Criminal Code of Serbia that entered into force in January 2006 incorporates crimes under the Rome Treaty, including offences committed under Article (7) (1) (k) of the Statute. The Law on International Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, which mandates cooperation with the ICC, was adopted by Serbia in 2009.
Whatever the nature of the device used on 15 March to intimidate and injure crowds of civilian protesters in Belgrade, whether it was LRAD, a different type of “sound cannon, or as some suspect a Vortex ring gun, it would seem reasonable to suppose that an incident has occurred exhibiting characteristics of a Crime against humanity pursuant to Article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction over violations of international criminal law in Serbia. It is therefore incumbent upon the Court to open a full-scale investigation into the matter in order to determine, firstly, whether there is sufficient evidence to establish elements of the crime and, secondly, if so to identify the culprits and hold them accountable under the pertinent provisions of international criminal law.
ICC’s failure to do so, in particular if that is due to the absence of a political directive to proceed, will gravely compromise the perception of international justice and further undermine ICC’s problematic reputation as a professional and independent judicial institution.
