Lawyers Nikola Martinović, Dragoljub Đukanović and Danilo Mićović announced today that the presumption of innocence of their clients was violated by the publication of the contents of Sky communication.
They announced this at a press conference, claiming that they are making an extraordinary address to the public in order to "appeal that human rights in Montenegro be brought to a level suitable for the development of Montenegrin society".
"The presumption of innocence has been clearly and absolutely threatened in recent months, because information that should not be part of media speculation is published for the sake of political points. The media has recently been publishing unverified, out-of-context parts of the so-called Sky application and things that can cause serious family and other conflicts types. They publish about our clients and there is not a single proven fact that it is about them. For these reasons, I want to point out to the public that such sensationalism must not be allowed in Montenegro," Martinović emphasized.
He added that the Montenegrin public should know, regarding Sky, that what is being published did not come from the defense, nor from any lawyer, and that until two months ago they did not have any insight into any information from Europol.
"That is why it is even more surprising and worrying for us, that even such data appear on the website of the Government of Montenegro. Journalistic reporting and sensationalism must not be based on human rights violations," said Martinović.
He reminded that Montenegro signed the law on cooperation with Europol, which was signed in 2015, and according to which the Montenegrin state undertook to keep all the data it receives from Europol as confidential as possible. Martinović pointed out that today "it has come to an absurdity" that the Minister of the Interior publicly supports the publication of data on television that he himself said he would keep.
Đukanović and Martinović pointed out that the occasion for their address to the public was the latest verdict of the Appellate Court in Belgrade, which overturned the "Sky" verdict, which, they say, "is only a confirmation of what they said six months ago."
"The Montenegrin lawyers said - you cannot use the documentation without enabling the defense to verify how the documentation was created, who obtained it, and from when to when the documentation was obtained. To this day, the Montenegrin lawyers do not have any access to the information who could tell them - who collected the information from the Sky application, on whose orders it was collected and, most importantly, whether it was authentically transmitted. The Court of Appeal in Belgrade, based on these principles, which are the basis of every fair procedure, announced that the defense must have the data about the method of obtaining it, the time of obtaining it and who obtained the data, so that we can check the authenticity. The Montenegrin judiciary obviously still does not have the capacity to make the decision made by the Court of Appeal in Belgrade," said Martinović.
Martinović also claims that "journalistic reporting and sensationalism must not be at the expense of justice or the violation of certain human rights."
"Today in Montenegro we have an obvious example that the presumption of innocence is not respected and that lawyers and defendants do not have an adequate and effective legal remedy against this".
The "Vijesti" journalist reminded the lawyers that Sky communications, messages and conversations were taken as evidence in the High Court on June 27, and that it was the court that identified the individual defendants, which means that there was no journalistic interpretation.
"Has anyone identified those people who are being talked about in the media? Europol did not identify them, but indicated very reservedly that they might be some people," said Martinović.
Đukanović said that it was about data from his private life, which certainly should not have been released to the public and newspapers.
"I don't think they should have been brought to the court during the main hearing, because the Sky application is absolutely not evidence. And it will be shown in the end that it is not evidence, because we do not have a single order from France, how and in what way it was obtained. It is very likely that there was some hacking. I believe that the court should not have presented that as evidence," said Đukanović.
It was better during Katnić's time
"All international Montenegrin partners see that there is a leak of data through the media, and not through the channels of the prosecution and through the defense, or through the police, then you have a serious problem in such a state administration. And one should ask why there is no more Sky communications in the last two years. We are only dealing with the documentation that came during the time when the previous executive power was in that police in that prosecutor's office, while the chief special prosecutor was Katnić, not Mr. Adžić. And you see that international cooperation has stopped and you see that there have been no results ", emphasized Martinović.
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