Fireworks as thousands greet Serbian students who cycled to France seeking EU support for protests

NOVI SAD, Serbia (AP) — Thousands of people greeted on Tuesday a group of Serbian university students who had cycled more than 1,300 kilometers (780 miles) this month to draw European Union attention to their struggle against corruption in the Balkan country.

Fireworks, drums and whistles echoed through the northern city of Novi Sad as some 80 students symbolically received medals and walked a red carpet in a joyous recognition of their effort in early April.

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A dog walks across a red carpet prior to a welcoming ceremony for 80 Serbian university students who cycled more than 1,300 kilometers (780 miles) during last week, from Novi Sad to Strasbourg, France, to draw EU attention to their months-long protests against corruption, in Novi Sad, Serbia, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

People welcome 80 Serbian university students who cycled more than 1,300 kilometers (780 miles) during last week, from Novi Sad to Strasbourg, France, to draw EU attention to their months-long protests against corruption, in Novi Sad, Serbia, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

The 13-day cycling trip from Novi Sad to Strasbourg, France, aimed to garner support in the EU for monthslong student-led protests seeking justice for the 16 victims of a deadly train station canopy collapse in the city in November.

“We symbolically showed the determination and persistence of our generation to fight for a better tomorrow and a future that we deserve,” one of the students told the cheering crowd in Novi Sad.

The nationwide anti-graft movement led by the students has rattled increasingly authoritarian President Aleksandar Vucic. While they enjoy huge support at home and in the Balkan region, Serbia’s protesting students feel they haven’t received enough backing from the EU.

Serbia is formally seeking membership in the 27-nation bloc but has been backsliding in democratic freedoms and the rule of law. The EU’s reaction to the mostly peaceful student-led protests has been lukewarm and officials have refrained from publicly criticizing Vucic.

While in Strasbourg, a student delegation met with officials from the European Parliament and the Council of Europe. Along the way, the Serbian students passed through Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Germany before reaching France.

Many in Serbia blamed the Novi Sad train station canopy collapse on rampant corruption. The protesting students have been demanding punishment for those responsible for the Nov. 1 tragedy and an end to government pressure and violence against protesters.

DEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — Karen Read’s second murder trial began Tuesday with a prosecutor saying the defendant’s own words will bolster evidence that she killed her police officer boyfriend three years ago and a defense attorney calling the case “the definition of reasonable doubt.”

Read is accused of striking her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, with her SUV in 2022 and leaving him to die alone in the snow outside of a house party in Canton, a suburb about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Boston. She has been charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene.

Prosecutors say Read intentionally backed into O’Keefe after she dropped him off at the home of a fellow Boston officer Brian Albert and returned hours later to find him dead. The defense says that she was a victim of a vast police conspiracy and that O’Keefe was fatally beaten by another law enforcement officer at the party.

A mistrial was declared last year after jurors said they were at an impasse and deliberating further would be futile.

The biggest difference in the current trial is the lead prosecutor, Hank Brennan. Brought in as a special prosecutor after the mistrial, the former defense attorney has represented a number of prominent clients, including notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger.

In opening statements Tuesday, Brennan told jurors that “facts and data” will lead them to the truth, and that Read’s own statements will confirm it. The first witness he called was paramedic Timothy Nuttall, who testified that when he responded to the scene that morning, a frantic Read said, “I hit him. I hit him. I hit him.”

“She admitted what she had done that night,” said Brennan, who also played a clip from a television interview in which Read said, “I mean, I didn’t think I ‘hit him’ hit him, but could I have clipped him? Could I have tagged him in the knee and incapacitated him? He didn’t look mortally wounded, as far as I could see. Could I have done something that knocked him out, and in his drunkenness and in the cold, he didn’t come to again?”

But defense attorney Alan Jackson told jurors that Read never said “I hit him” and that prosecutors are trying to twist her other statements into a confession.

“That’s a person trying to make sense of an unexplainable circumstance, a natural concern of a bereaved significant other, a woman desperately trying to piece together what could have happened on this tragic night,” he said.

Cross-examining the paramedic, Jackson noted that Nuttall testified at the first trial that Read said “I hit him,” twice, not three times. But Nuttall insisted Tuesday that she said it three times.

Jackson said in his opening statement that the prosecution’s case was based on a “brazen and flawed assertion that is untethered to the facts and the evidence.”

“John O’Keefe did not die from being hit by a vehicle,” he said. “The facts will show that. The evidence will show that. The data will show that. The science will show that and the experts will tell you that.”

Many of the factors that made the first trial must-see television will feature in the second. Most of the same witnesses are back as are Read’s aggressive defense team and her supporters camped out near the courthouse. Read, who has been featured in several documentaries about her case, has become a minor celebrity.

On Tuesday, a few dozen of Read’s supporters, many holding American flags, stood in front of the courthouse before moving a block away to comply with a court-ordered buffer zone. Those who were reuniting hugged, while others took time to bring newcomers up to speed on the case.

“I’m here for justice,” said Ashlyn Wade, a Read supporter from Canton. “The murderer going to jail and Karen being exonerated, that would be justice.”

The prosecution, however, stands to benefit from a pretrial ruling from Judge Beverly Cannone barring defense attorneys from mentioning potential third-party culprits in their opening statements. They can develop a case against two law enforcement officers but cannot implicate Albert’s nephew, Colin Albert, as they did in the first trial.

“I view it as a blow to the defense strategy but not a knockout punch,” Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University, said of the ruling. “All the defense needs to do is create reasonable doubt about Karen (Read’s) guilt, and that doesn’t require pointing to an alternative perpetrator as a matter of law.”

Jackson called the prosecution’s case “the literal definition of reasonable doubt” in his opening statement and said the heavy burden of proof will not be met given that “every piece of this case was handled by a disgraced investigator with a motive to protect his friends”

“By the end of this trial, you’ll conclude that Karen Read is not guilty,” he said. “She’s the victim of a botched and biased and corrupted investigation that was never about the truth, folks. It was about preserving loyalty.”

One of the key witnesses will be former State Trooper Michael Proctor. He led the investigation but has since been fired after a disciplinary board found that he sent sexist and crude texts about Read to his family and colleagues. Jackson called him a “cancer” that infected every step of the investigation and characterized him as both the key to the state’s case and its Achilles’ heel.

The state’s second witness Tuesday was Kerry Roberts, a friend of O’Keefe’s who testified that Read called her at 5 a.m. the day after the house party, screamed “Kerry! Kerry! Kerry! John’s dead!” and hung up. Roberts then went to O’Keefe’s house with Read to search for him and then to the Albert home.

Roberts said she couldn’t see anything when they pulled up but that Read said, “there he is,” and jumped out of the car.

“She ran right over to the mound of snow,” Roberts said. “Once she got to it, you could tell it was a mound of snow the length of a body.”