Head of Serbia's Criminal Police Arrested: The Man Vučić Praised Is Now Suspected of Torture

Marko Kričak, head of Serbia's Criminal Police Directorate, was arrested on 1 November. That is exactly one week after Aleksandar Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party lost the parliamentary elections to the Student List. Boško Sekulović, head of the Crime Suppression Service, was detained with him.

According to Serbian media, Kričak is the first head of that directorate arrested while in office. The operation was carried out by the police anti-corruption service, and the two are being held for up to 48 hours. So he was detained by people from the police he was sitting on top of until yesterday.

A belt on the feet, a hood over the head

The Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade suspects that on 16 May, between two and three in the morning, Kričak and police officers not yet identified abused a man with the initials N.L. on the directorate's premises. They hit him on the head with open hands and fists, put a hood on him and choked him, then took off his socks and beat him with a belt on the soles of his feet and his back. The man was left with haematomas on his right leg and foot. Kričak's responsibility has not been established in court: these are the prosecutors' suspicions, not a verdict.

That is half of the case. The other half begins with Aleksandar Nešović, known as Baja, killed on 12 May in the restaurant 27 in Belgrade's Senjak. Then Belgrade police chief Veselin Milić was arrested, dismissed and spent more than 50 days in custody. Prosecutors now suspect that Sekulović filed a complaint against him even though he knew Milić had left the restaurant before the killing. Statements from five people and camera footage confirmed it, but they weren't in the complaint. Kričak, the suspicion goes, approved it verbally.

Complaints, then a promotion

Before the police Kričak sold cars, then worked at the Security Information Agency. In 2023 he took command of the Unit for the Protection of Certain Persons and Facilities, whose members took part in interventions against demonstrators. Student Nikolina Sinđelić accused him of slapping her, banging her head against a wall and threatening to rape her in the garage of the Serbian government building after a protest in August 2025. The Serbian Interior Ministry rejected the accusations, and Kričak filed a private lawsuit against her for damage to honour and reputation.

On 30 December 2025 he became head of the Criminal Police Directorate. Vučić publicly praised his work several times, and in September Kričak appeared at the funeral of Ratko Mladić, convicted of the Srebrenica genocide. Complaints didn't stop his career. The election result did, or at least that's how it looks.

Why only now?

Belgrade's Chief Public Prosecutor Nenad Stefanović claims the arrests have nothing to do with the elections, since prosecutors have been acting since May. Fine. But the camera footage existed back in May, Milić's lawyers filed their complaint on 30 July, and Kričak stayed in office until the students, after their victory, demanded his dismissal. He didn't resign. If the investigation ran for more than five months, why did the arrest arrive seven days after the elections?

The Balkans know this scene by heart: institutions that look away for years suddenly regain their sight when the votes in the boxes change. Maybe this time is different, and the test is simple. The complaint by Sinđelić and student Dušan Cvetković isn't part of this arrest, nor are the complaints of alleged abuse of minors during the protests.

On 9 November Milić goes on trial for failing to report a crime and forging an official document. That's part of the clash at the top of the police. Will prosecutors also open the file on the students who say they were beaten, or will they stop at a quarrel between police chiefs?