An open letter to the Government of Vrna Gora, the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme State Prosecutor and the Special Prosecutor
Also this year, on April 18, a terrible crime was commemorated, when in 1999 twenty-two civilians were killed in the Rožaj area, just because they were ethnic Albanians and people of a different religion, at the hands of members of the then army of Serbia and Montenegro. Will someone send the families of the innocent victims this time, on behalf of Montenegro, a casual but proverbial notice: the prosecutor's office is working on it, the case is being investigated.
Acting on behalf of the injured families, and also as a person who advocates for the protection of human rights and justice, I do not agree to that, nor to an "alibi" or some kind of excuse - well, there was a trial, people were freed and that page about the crime is closed in the state of Montenegro. On the contrary, it turns out to be chronic state silence, direct and indirect hiding of those who committed, lobbied and covered up the crime, and especially delaying the confrontation of the injured and the criminals, the state with the crime, the injustice with the justice, the inhumanity with the human, in a real court procedure. The committed crime is thereby further complicated or a kind of association or justification of the crime is made, which is again a crime in itself.
Fraudulently or unprofessionally accusing a certain commander for allegedly ordering the killing and several dubiously selected members of the military unit for allegedly killing civilians, at the very start of the court process, turned out to be a classic judicial farce. Not agreeing to be a part of that terrible "show", I responsibly confirm that due to a very poorly directed, worded and legally unfounded indictment, an acquittal was logically followed. Now who is right here: whether she under whose supervision the indictment was brought then or the same one whose time the accusation was later rejected, is not known for sure. To that essential question, no one has yet given a comprehensible answer, as well as the one that would concern the responsibility for the "official-legal" enormous budget damage, caused as a result of a bad or wrong accusation.
On the order of someone who could give orders in those war-non-war times, either the one who was in command or the one who was in charge of the investigation and was in charge of handing over the bodies of the victims to the families (who were then in Rožaje due to military terror) "it happened" , but not by chance: the bodies of the victims of the crime in Kaluđerski laz, not long after the crime was committed, were found 40 km away, i.e. in Novi Selo near Peć, all in one pit. Although it is known for sure that the Montenegrin prosecutor's office has the details of all this, and it is a case of classic hiding and cover-up of crimes, it is certain that the true investigation of this crime has practically not yet started from a standstill.
On the other hand, it is also known that the perpetrators of the crime in Kaluđerski laz are from Montenegro and that only the Montenegrin prosecutor's office is obliged to investigate the crime, uncover it and bring to justice not only the perpetrators, but also the instigators, accomplices, helpers, those who hid the crime and avoided taking binding legal action to uncover it. If it is not expected that the story of the crime will come to an end only with the biological death of those responsible, the prosecution has not yet offered the public any other answer.
If for nothing else, if only because of the image of this Montenegro and the coalition's "honest" Albanian champions, for whom, by all accounts, that crime has become a "Spanish village", I appeal that the case not be left to oblivion, or specifically - that the prosecutor's office finally dares , discover and bring to justice all those who killed innocent citizens in the name of Montenegro, as well as those who lobbied for the crime not to be discovered.
I am making a strong appeal, especially to the Supreme and Special State Prosecutor's Offices and the relevant state institutions, to do everything possible to investigate the crime. Until this is done, the only debtor to the injured families is the state. At the same time, I call on all state and political associations and significant representatives of the people to whom the victims and injured families belong, to jointly insist on the discovery of the crime and fair compensation to the victims' families.
The author is a lawyer and executive director of the Montenegrin Committee of Lawyers for the Protection of Human Rights
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