They are looking for the attacker on the camera footage, the motive in the texts

Yesterday, the police failed to trace the person who shot Olivera Lakić and wounded her at the entrance of the building where she lives.

The "Vijesti" journalist was wounded two nights ago, just before 21 p.m. She was hospitalized in the Podgorica Clinical Center with a gunshot wound to the lower leg.

According to the knowledge of "Vijesti", the prosecution did not decide until last night whether to qualify the wounding of Lakić as attempted murder.

"Vijesta" was unofficially told by the Police Directorate that inspectors, on the order of senior prosecutor Suzana Milić, examined footage from surveillance cameras near the place where Lakić was wounded.

They claimed that they were checking where and with whom suspicious persons were and were interviewing witnesses.

And the wounded Lakić gave his statement in front of prosecutor Milić and police inspectors.

In order to determine whether the assailant had helpers who followed the journalist and possibly informed him when she left the newsroom for home, the police will review surveillance camera footage from the city center.

A source from the investigation unofficially told "Vijesta" that they are checking in which texts of Olivera Lakić the motive for wounding can be hidden.

This was confirmed by the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mevludin Nuhodžić, who said yesterday that the focus of the investigation is all individuals and everything that was the subject of its writing.

"That will be checked as a possible motive for the attack on Ms. Lakić. And these last posts, you probably mean tobacco smuggling, that case is with the prosecutor's office, and the police will prepare everything that the Special Prosecutor's Office needs for a quality investigation and make it available without any reservations," Nuhodžić answered the journalists of "Vijesti".

For years, journalist Lakić wrote about cigarette smuggling, the security situation in the country, reported on almost all issues of importance.

In January, February and April, Lakić wrote again about cigarette smuggling, for which she was the target of attacks even six years ago. In the article "Either the state turns a blind eye to smuggling, or smugglers are blackmailed", published on February 12, Lakićeva and Mihailo Jovović wrote that due to the silence of the Commission for the Prevention of the Gray Economy, "Vijesti" could not find out if and how many police officers and others state authorities involved in cigarette smuggling, whether an investigation has been launched against any of them and at what stage the investigation is.

Then they also announced that there is no one to check the credibility of the stories of individual members of the traffic police, who say more and more openly that some high-ranking officers of the Police Administration were accompanying a convoy of illegal cigarettes. Nor why production plants, warehouses, garages, basements and other warehouses and excise goods are still untouchable.

Her text "Is cigar smuggling still a state business?", was published on April 11 in "Vijesti". At the time, Lakić wrote that the Government's Commission for Suppression of the Gray Economy does not know or does not want to announce whether there are illegal factories for the production of cigarettes or organized sales of illegally imported or manufactured cigarettes in Montenegro. But the public was not told whether any of the authorities checked the "Tara" cigarette factory in Mojkovac, in order to determine where the cigarettes on the gray market came from, whose packaging says they were produced there, but were not registered with the Tobacco Agency.

Recently, she also investigated the inaction of the judicial authorities during the court proceedings conducted against Safet Kalić from Rožajec. She published an article about this under the title "The court knew before the verdict that Kalić was convicted in Germany, refused extradition".

It was Lakić who disclosed that prosecutor Gruj Radonjić is suspected by the Special State Prosecutor's Office (SDT) of having committed the criminal offense of greenwashing.

At the beginning of April, she also wrote about the session of the National Security Council, where there were storms, arguments, objections, transfer of responsibility from one to another, and harsh words. Then she announced that, according to unofficial information, the head of criminal investigation, Enis Baković, presented a series of objections to the chief special prosecutor, Milivoj Katnić, about the work of the Special Police Department (SPO), complaining that he was not informed about anything from that team and that he did not know what they were doing. .

In mid-January, she found out and announced that the security of the special state prosecutor Saša Čađenović was threatened due to brutal threats by Ilija Pavlović, who was arrested with his brother Bosko on the order of that prosecutor in September of last year.

In August of last year, she wrote about the investigation into the attempted murder of police officer Predrag Šuković, which is ongoing.

Šuković was wounded in the leg on July 11, 2016, and on suspicion of having tried to kill the former head of the Department for the Fight against Organized Crime and Corruption, on the orders of that prosecution, on October 2 of the same year, a former member of the military intelligence service, Radovan Aleksić, was arrested (56). In 2016, Šuković was sentenced by the Basic Court in Podgorica to three months of suspended imprisonment for comments on the "Vijesti" portal, which, the court found, threatened the then Vice President and current Prime Minister, Duško Marković. Marković filed a private lawsuit against the police officer after the Basic and Higher Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica assessed that Šuković's comments did not constitute a criminal offense that could be prosecuted ex officio. Marković then condemned the "brutal attack on a police officer" and rejected speculations about the connection between this case and him. After the scandal with Marković broke out, Šuković publicly accused the then deputy prime minister and former police chief Veselin Veljović of being "actors in the case of the criminal group from Mojkovac" that was allegedly engaged in cigarette smuggling. Marković strongly denied this, claiming that he had never heard of the "Mojkovac clan".

There must be no mercy for those who shoot journalists

There must be no mercy for those who attack and shoot journalists in every democratic country, said last night the head of the OSCE mission for media freedom, Harlem Desir, who visited the wounded journalist Olivera Lakić.

He said that Lakić was a brave and daring journalist, and he mentioned her articles about cigarette smuggling.

Desir called on the authorities to investigate what was written in her texts.

Lakić was visited yesterday in the hospital by the ambassador and head of the EU delegation in Montenegro Aivo Orav, chargé d'affaires at the American embassy Judy Kuo, minister of the interior Mevludin Nuhodžić...

Orav assessed that the brutal attack was absolutely unacceptable and pointed out that journalist Lakić did her job as an investigative journalist excellently and thus supported the democratization of society.

"That's why now the most important questions are who did it, why did he do it. We expect answers soon", said Orav.

Kuo assessed that the attack on Lakić was "an attack on media freedom and democracy in Montenegro."

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