Whether the retrial of the accused in the coup d'état case will begin this month depends on several factors - and above all on the covid 19 virus and the state of health of all participants in the proceedings, bearing in mind the large number of defendants and their lawyers.
The new "trial of the century", as some media have "christened" the trial of those accused of attempted terrorism on the day of the parliamentary elections in 2016, is scheduled for January 17, 2022 in the High Court in Podgorica, after the Court of Appeal in February 2021. annulled the first-instance verdict by which, among others, the leaders of the Democratic Front Andrija Mandic i Milan Knezevic sentenced to five years in prison each.
The second-instance court found that the verdict contained significant violations of the provisions of the criminal procedure.
"In the retrial, the first-instance court will remedy the violations pointed out to it by this decision, so in the retrial it will implement the evidence presented so far, as well as possibly other evidence, which the parties learned about after the main trial and which they submitted to the second-instance court in the appeals decision-making process, after which the defense will, with a comprehensive and careful assessment of all the accused and the presented evidence, make a proper and legal decision, which will be properly justified," the decision reads.
Whether the judges of the Court of Appeal took into account the proposals of the defense attorney and the Special Prosecutor's Office at the end of the evidentiary proceedings, and at the beginning of the closing arguments in mid-March 2019, will be seen in the repeated trial in the Podgorica High Court.
As a reminder, at the trial on March 13, 2019, on the day of the scheduled closing arguments in the High Court, the defense proposed that two audio-video recordings of the statements of associate witness Saša Sinđelić be used as evidence. On the following day, March 14, immediately before the search, the court received a submission from the Special State Prosecutor's Office, in which it is stated that two recordings of Saša Sinđelić's statements will be submitted. The videos were published on portals in Montenegro under the title "When the BIA threatens".
Sinđelić made this statement in a restaurant in a village near Belgrade in February 2019.
"During my stay in Moscow, I understood what it was all about, that a literal coup d'état was being prepared in Montenegro - to overthrow the government. I understood that from everything that Šišmakov himself presented to me, I saw that it was, to say the least, a very serious matter", said Sinđelić.
He explained that the plan failed, due to the sudden withdrawal of the Democratic Front from the announced demonstrations, that is, that the main problem was that the DF did not want to bring people to the square.
It is just one in a series of different or, more precisely, controversial statements of the cooperating witness that he gave both in the courtroom and outside it. The assessment of his testimony before the judicial authorities of Serbia and Montenegro was given in great detail by the Court of Appeal in the final decision.
FINAL SOLUTION
The judges of the Appellate Court stated that the High Court changed the factual description of the indictment, determining a different period of activity for the accused Eduard Shismakova, Vladimir Popova, Bratislava Dikić in a criminal organization, which violated the objective identity of the prosecution. It is added that the verdict is incomprehensible in relation to the actions of Šišmakov and Popov, as organizers of a criminal organization.
"The first-instance court stated that the accused Šišmakov and Popov, in order to realize the criminal plan - committing the criminal offense of terrorism and the criminal offense of murdering the highest representatives of Montenegro, determined for themselves to plan the execution of criminal offenses in the future, to provide money and material resources for the execution of criminal offenses acts and to commit criminal acts themselves. However, it is unclear from the verdict when and where the accused Šišmakov and Popov, as organizers, personally and through other persons recruited members of the criminal organization, i.e. to which members they issued orders and instructions, exactly which orders and instructions they put into operation, and how and in what way they carried out their supervision and control... which is why there was no clear determination of what actions these accused, as organizers of a criminal organization in relation to its members, undertook in order to realize the criminal plan and the actual functioning of that organization".
The judges are also wondering who hired 50 unidentified members of the criminal organization.
"The first-instance court concluded that the accused Šišmakov hired 50 other, for now unidentified, members of the criminal organization, and then on page 10 of the same verdict, it stated that these 50 unidentified members of the criminal organization were hired by the organizers of the criminal organization Šišmakov and Popov, which according to the order This court's ruling makes it incomprehensible and self-contradictory, because it cannot be concluded from it who hired these members, whether it was the accused Šišmakov or he together with the accused Vladimir Popov".
The decision states that there is no evidence that Mandić and Knežević met with Šišmakov in Moscow and states that the conclusion of the first-instance court in this regard is completely unclear.
"... Completely unclear, considering that such a thing does not emerge from the evidence presented, especially the testimony of the witness Sinđelić's associate, who stated that the accused Šišmakov did not specifically mention to him the names of the leaders of the Democratic Front, including the accused Andrija Mandić, and the statements of the accused Šišmakov, who stated that he had no meetings and conversations with the accused Mandić, as well as from the testimony of witnesses NM and PB, who pointed out that this accused had meetings with representatives of the political structures there in Moscow in 2016, which was certainly not the accused Šišmakov, who is accused of being the organizer of a criminal organization. The conclusion of the first-instance court that the act of acting on the instructions of the organizers and members of the criminal organization of the accused Mandić is wrong, stems from the fact that the named person traveled to Moscow several times during 2016", the decision of the Court of Appeal states.
It is added that the evidence presented does not show that Milan Knežević, when he went to Moscow, met with the organizers of the criminal organization.
"... The conclusion of the first-instance court that the accused Knežević, by going to Moscow in 2016, acted on the instructions of the organizers and members of a criminal organization that was formed by two citizens of the Russian Federation, due to the lack of evidence obtained in a legal way that would point to communication and the specific meetings of these accused with Šišmakov Eduard and Popov Vladimir, is an assumption, given that the same has not been confirmed by the conducted evidence".
CONTROVERSIAL AND PROCUREMENT OF WEAPONS
In the termination decision, it is stated that from the testimony of the witness Sinđelić's collaborator and the witness Mirko Velimirović, it does not follow that the weapons and equipment which, according to the criminal plan, were supposed to be brought into Montenegro, actually ended up in Montenegro.
Bearing in mind the above, that the weapons and equipment that were supposed to be taken over by the unidentified members of the criminal organization were not delivered either before or on the day of the parliamentary elections to the territory of Montenegro, and that it was not reliably established from the evidence that the unidentified members of the organization were on in the territory of Montenegro during the period of time when, according to the criminal plan, a terrorist act was to be carried out by the use of weapons by members of the NN, it cannot be reliably concluded that the execution of this act - a terrorist act - was attempted on the territory of Montenegro, and thus that it is attempt to commit the crime of terrorism, as the first instance court wrongly concluded".
It is explained that from the presented evidence, especially the testimony of Velimirović, it was not possible to draw a reliable conclusion, as the first-instance court did, that this witness acquired the weapon at the request of Sinđelić's associate witness, and for the needs of a criminal organization.
"Witness Velimirović, describing the actions he undertook in connection with the acquisition of weapons, stated that he met with a certain F., to whom he paid and took possession of the weapons - rifles with two boxes of bullets and five sacks of 10 rifles, after which he went to Zubin potok to lake, into which he threw his weapon. So, from the testimony of the witness Velimirović, it follows that he bought a weapon with bullets, which... immediately after that he disassembled and threw into the lake together with the bullets. However, since in this part the testimony of the witness Velimirović was not confirmed by any other evidence presented, above all it was not confirmed by the testimony of the person who sold and handed over the weapons and bullets to him, which was neither heard in this proceeding, nor were these weapons and ammunition photographed by the witness Velimirović after his purchase, which would have confirmed the purchase of that weapon and ammunition, as well as the fact that the place was not photographed and it is not known in which part of the lake the weapon with ammunition was destroyed, that is the wrong conclusion of the first-instance court that a decisive fact in view procurement of weapons with ammunition, which according to a criminal plan should have been brought into Montenegro and used in an attack on the police and citizens, can be reliably deduced from the testimony of the witness Mirko Velimirović", states, among other things, in the decision of the Court of Appeal.
Sinđelić is not enough to condemn
The defense attorneys of the defendants, with whom "Vijesti" spoke, say that they await the new trial for the "coup d'état" with moderate optimism.
The lawyer of Russian citizen Eduard Šišmakov, who was tried in absentia, lawyer Radonja Drakulović, points out that the accusations are absurd and that he expects an acquittal in the repeated court process.
"I expect an acquittal from the new court process because the decision of the Court of Appeal clearly indicated what needs to be done... On all counts of the indictment, the first-instance verdict was annulled, although the decision of the High Court should not be prejudiced. Even during the first trial it was clear that all the accusations were absurd. According to the Code of Criminal Procedure, it is clearly stated that the defendant cannot be announced and convicted only on the basis of the testimony of an associate witness, and this is precisely what happened in this proceeding with the testimony of Saša Sinđelić, who gave two diametrically opposed statements. Later, during the trial, he retracted his testimony. His statement is legally invalid and was not obtained in accordance with the law. Telecommunication expert Predrag Boljević determined the mobile phone number of Eduard Šišmakov based on the testimony of the associate witness, which is not his job, but the court's job," said Drakulović.
Lawyer Dražen Medojević, the defense attorney for the defendants Mihail Čađenović and Dragan Maksić, is not optimistic that the trial will begin.
"I still don't know if the trial will take place with this number of defendants. If it is held, everything will be clear, considering the content of the annulment decision, in which everything is written. The defense proposed a new number of pieces of evidence that should be presented in the evidentiary proceedings. They will show all the abuses committed by the Special State Prosecutor's Office, which will show that this is a classic political staged procedure", claims Medojević.
The defense attorney of the defendant Nemanja Ristić, who is being tried in absentia, lawyer Mladen Dubak, expects that the trial will last less than before.
"We hope that this trial will last less than the previous one. The question is whether all the defense attorneys, as well as the special prosecutor, will agree to read the evidence that has already been presented or whether everything will start from the beginning. However, as the defender of Nemanja Ristić, who is being tried in absentia, I still expect this to end quickly in the most favorable way for my client".
Lawyer Vaso Bečanović, the defender of the defendant Srboljub Đorđević, a citizen of Serbia, says that his client will regularly respond to court summons.
"I expect that the High Court will act on the annulment decision of the Court of Appeal. As for the duration of the proceedings, it is ungrateful to forecast, bearing in mind the large number of defendants and defense attorneys, as well as the complexity and nature of the criminal case," said Bečanović, adding that Đorđević will respond to all subpoenas.
50
the currently unidentified members of the criminal organization were hired by Šišmakov, the first-instance court concluded, in order to state on page 10 of the same ruling that these 50 unidentified members of the criminal organization were hired by the organizers of the criminal organization, Šišmakov and Popov, which, according to the ruling of this court, makes the sentence incomprehensible and self-contradictory
The conclusion of the first-instance court that the accused Knežević, by going to Moscow in 2016, acted on the instructions of the organizers and members of the criminal organization... due to the lack of evidence obtained in a legal way that would point to the communication and specific meetings of these accused with Šišmakov Eduard and Popov Vladimir, is assumption, considering that the same was not confirmed by the conducted evidence"
Bonus video:
