BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia this week arrested 11 people suspected of spreading racial hatred in European countries on the instructions from a foreign intelligence service, including placing pig heads outside Muslim religious sites in Paris, officials said.
Serbian police said in a statement Monday that the group was detained over incidents in France and Germany that took place between April and September. A suspected organizer, who Serbian police said acted on instructions from an unidentified foreign security agency, remains at large.
The police statement did not specify the foreign agency. French authorities characterized the depositing of pig heads near Paris-area mosques earlier this month as an attempted foreign interference effort, demonstrating “a manifest desire to provoke trouble in the heart of the nation.”
French authorities did not name any country but the incident bore possible hallmarks of previous suspected Russian-linked acts of attempted destabilization that have targeted France and other allies of Ukraine.
Mapping by The Associated Press of alleged disruption efforts by Russia and its proxies has documented dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe, with France and Germany — another key ally of Ukraine — among the principal targets.
The Serbian police said the suspects were detained in Belgrade and another town. The terse statement said the alleged instructor, who was not named, had organized and trained the group to help incite hatred, discrimination and violence in both Germany and France.
Serbia’s autocratic President Aleksandar Vucic has maintained close relations with Russia while Serbia remains the only country in Europe that has not imposed sanctions on Moscow over the war in Ukraine, even as Belgrade formally seeks European Union membership.
Just days ago, Serbia arrested two suspects over alleged training of more than 100 foreign nationals to incite riots during a key election in Moldova last weekend, which was won by the country’s pro-Western government.
In France, the pig heads were discovered near nine Paris-area mosques and five of them were written with the surname of French President Emmanuel Macron, authorities said.
A farmer in France’s Normandy region alerted police that two people had bought about 10 pig heads from him, and he identified their car as having Serbian license plates, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
The car was then filmed by security cameras in Paris, which also spotted two men depositing heads in front of mosques, the prosecutors’ office said. It said the men were foreign nationals, without identifying their country, and that they left France immediately afterward, with a Croatia-registered phone they were believed to be using tracked crossing the border with Belgium.
In May, a Paris Holocaust memorial, three synagogues and a restaurant were daubed with green paint, French media reported.
The attack was reminiscent of an earlier act of vandalism in May 2024, when a Paris memorial honoring people who distinguished themselves by helping to rescue Jews in France during the country’s Nazi occupation in World War II was defaced with painted blood-red hands. A French intelligence report said the Russian intelligence agency FSB ordered that attack.
Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
