Interior Ministry: Amnesty International’s Claims Represent an Attack on Serbia’s Security Practice

Ivica Dacic (BetaPhoto/Serbian Ministry of Interior)

Claims by Amnesty International (AI), an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, that Serbian police and intelligence authorities had been using advanced phone spyware alongside mobile phone forensic products to target journalists and environmental activists, were unfounded and represented an attack on Serbia’s security practice, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said on Dec. 17.

Speaking to TV Pink, Dacic dismissed the allegations that the police had deployed any sort of spyware system to covertly infect mobile phones of journalists or activists while in detention.

“No one has ever claimed for our security practice to be that much technologically advanced... Those products are actually donations we have received from the West and we have been using them in line with the law” Dacic said.

AI has said that the Security Information Agency (BIA) and the police use mobile forensic products made by Cellebrite, a firm founded and headquartered in Israel but with offices globally, for the extraction of data from mobile devices of journalists and activists.  

These allegations have been dismissed by BIA and the Interior Ministry.