In my capacity as the executive director of the Montenegrin Committee of Lawyers for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms, on November 13 of the previous year, in a polite letter, I addressed Mrs. Tatjana Begović, Acting Prosecutor, and Vladimir Novović, SDT, for an interview on the subject of the prosecutor's strategy on disclosure and prosecution for committed and unprocessed war crimes. In the letter, better said the request, among other things, the top state prosecutor reminded:
You probably know that in the period from 1992-1999. in Montenegrin territory, war crimes, and in one case even genocide, occurred, which have not yet been investigated. This is precisely why I remind you of the Prosecutor's Strategy from 2015 for the investigation of war crimes, by which, among other things, the prosecution undertook to update and additionally verify all those cases of human, and in some cases, gross state negligence. The public is not informed about all this, or there is nothing to be informed about, which reduces the adopted Strategy to a worthless piece of paper, and introduces the prosecutor's office into the zone of "too loud prosecutorial silence".
- In the period from 1992-1995, in the area of Bukovica, Pljeval, according to international and domestic law, genocide was committed against the Bosniak people. In view of the fact that during that period, on the territory of this country, no war operations were conducted and there were military-police killings or crimes in plain sight of the state security structures, in addition to the realization of the ancient "strategic" plan to make the Bosniaks disappear from that area, therefore it was not possible to steal the impression of the direct responsibility of the state, more precisely, of the responsibility of the holders of power at that time. It is a fact that in some cases, due to the killing of people, it is true involuntarily, court proceedings were conducted, but also that all cases of brutal killings, destruction of religious buildings and citizens' buildings, looting of property and expulsion are qualified as classic acts of criminal acts against life and limb. . Since that page of Montenegrin legal-prosecutor history has not yet been closed, it is imperative that the prosecution, primarily because of its constitutional obligation and the further fate of the injured and the nation to which they belong, adopt a correct prosecutorial-legal position.
- During May 1992, in the coastal zone, the Montenegrin police arrested more than eighty Bosniaks without reason, who had arrived there from the area affected by war activities with the status of internationally protected refugees. The brutal arrests and deportation of those arrested were carried out by order and approval from the highest state level, which was later confirmed, among other things, not only by the state's acceptance of compensation for the damaged families, but also by the testimony of the then president of the state, M. Bulatović. It is a fact that, much later, criminal-malicious court proceedings were conducted in Montenegro, which basically did not result in effective justice. It turned out that the principals or the most responsible were not called to criminal legal responsibility, but rather suspiciously selected, certain direct executors of that shameful state work. Therefore, following what was presented in the already filed criminal charges, there is a need to re-examine the case from the position of the independent prosecutor's office and finally take those prosecutorial-legal actions that would reduce the responsibility to specific names in a possibly impartial court procedure and thus close that case. a shameful page about a kind of historical burden that this country carries as a historical burden.
- In the first half of 1999, in the area of Rožaj, members of the then army of Serbia and Montenegro committed serious war crimes that resulted in the killing of twenty-two non-combatant civilians. For that undoubted crime, no one in Montenegro has yet been declared guilty. On the contrary, the controversial procedure in that case did not yield results, so the discovery and processing of that event was practically returned to the starting position. As in the discussions about the Prosecutor's Strategy related to the investigation of war crimes, we have publicly stated information from the representative of the prosecution that "so far there has not been enough political will to investigate the crimes", with the belief that the possible perpetrators of the crimes are still free citizens of Montenegro , thus we reasonably strengthen our insistence that finally, with the necessary amount of "will" and true resolve, the prosecution decides to investigate the case and to bring the principals and immediate perpetrators to justice.
- As a result of the NATO action, in April 1999, six civilians died in the town of Murino. Although in that case the responsibility of the protection system was more than obvious, or more precisely, it was possible to reduce the consequences to the responsibility of specific employees of the government at that time, that case has not yet been investigated to the required extent, that is, no one has yet been called to criminal legal responsibility. It is a fact that with the recent proposal of a legal solution, the Government understood the responsibility of the state, but also that the Supreme Court practically blocked the court proceedings of the injured families with a very problematic court decision. Precisely because of this, there is still an open question of the responsibility of the employees acting at the level of the Supreme Court, who, moving on the "edge" of judicial justice, in obvious violation of procedural and material regulations, at the expense of political calculations at the time, neglected the law to the detriment of the victims - which in itself reduces to their possible criminal-legal responsibility.
- One person died in the village of Besnik in Rožaj, as a result of air bombs dropped by the military planes of the Army of Serbia and Montenegro, on March 24, 03. After a long duration of the prosecutor's proceedings based on the filed report, the case was resolved by dismissing the criminal report. If the reasons for such a decision are evaluated casually, it can be concluded that its basis is more political and less legal and factual. Precisely because of this, if that controversial decision was reviewed from the position of that time and this time, I am convinced that in that case, more effective justice would be achieved in relation to the injured family.
- At the same time, so as not to forget the state crime committed in 1994 against the Bosniak people, which was carried out by brutal arrests and abuses of the then political champions of the Party of Democratic Action. In that case, the political reckoning with the people was carried out state-orchestrated through the police, the state security service, the prosecutor's office and the court. The effect with the projected epilogue resulted in: the SDA national party brought to its knees, from which it never recovered; the first-instance verdict sentenced the innocent to about a hundred years in prison, while the guilt of those arrested and abused was never confirmed on the merits; the court process, "interrupted" by abolition, which then kept the state's "delusion" and the brutal abuse of the leader of that party as an open case; for the very serious and documented police abuses of innocent people and the conduct of the political process, no one has yet been held accountable, nor is it likely that "due to the lack of prosecutorial-political will" anyone will ever be held accountable; the process itself produced a state of severe political-historical endangerment of an entire nation.
Without any doubt, the seriousness of the request and the announced topic of the conversation obliged the prosecutor's office to arrange the requested conversation, at least formally. On the other hand, when it comes to war crimes and the usual prosecutorial-legal silence, which in the lower drawers of the prosecutor's desks has long covered neatly arranged files, in the manner of "hypocritical" or "irrelevant", I am faced with something that does not seem reasonable end. So carried away by the earlier attitude of the prosecution towards war crimes, I remembered the details when the former Supreme State Prosecutor VM in relation to the crime "Kaluđerski laz" solemnly announced: "Here, let some lawyer from Rožaj hear, today we submitted a request for an investigation against twelve suspects." , which will eventually turn into a classic prosecutor-court farce. And so now, on December 15, 12, my reception and interview took place, but, for who knows what reasons, the hard sesame-prosecutor doors of the VDT and SDT did not open for me. Apparently, the first one didn't find it valuable or had anything to say about the fate of war crimes, and the second one, they said, was absent, so the conversation was reduced to a pleasant but correct conversation between me and t. TD At the end, when saying goodbye, thinking aloud, I said: "Coming to you, I took the step of a pessimist, and here I am leaving, pessimistically standing on both feet."
Therefore, with reasonable indignation, I publicly ask: whether the events that qualify as war crimes have been left to oblivion to such an extent that my announced visit to the prosecutor's office on the subject of war crimes remained publicly unnoticed; has the prosecution finally decided to leave the subject and area of war crimes, which is still open, with good prospects that it will not be closed in the foreseeable future, to one prosecutor's employee, while ignoring the need to form a strong expert team with logistics that can promise successful solutions; finally, does this Montenegro count that through the prosecution, which turns out to be a stumbling block, it closes long-opened chapters that are imperative for persistence on the road to European integration.
In the belief that these very serious cases of human suffering will not and must not be forgotten, I consider it justified that all of them, from the prosecutorial and legal aspect, should be additionally checked and investigated, which would also be a chance to, in terms of the challenge of time, state will and constitutional obligations, and especially the available evidence, provide prosecutorial and legal answers to the controversial but difficult question: why are the open pages of Montenegrin's not-so-old history still open.
The author is a lawyer and executive director of the Montenegrin Committee of Lawyers for the Protection of Human Rights
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