In the continuation of the trial in the "Coup d'etat" case, today in the High Court in Podgorica, the findings of the expert and the testimony of the associate witness Saša Sinđelić and the witness Mirko Paja Velimirović were read. The defense pointed out objections to their testimony as in the previous proceedings, when they were heard at the trials held in 2017 and 2018.
In the proceedings before the High Court in Podgorica, Sinđelić gave a statement in which he identified Russian citizen Eduard Šišmakov as the organizer and financier of the alleged coup d'état in Montenegro, stating that "it must succeed because the DF leaders asked for it, and that they they won't, they can't seize power without weapons".
Šišmakov said that Milo Đukanović must not be allowed to leave Podgorica at all. That man must be arrested and put on trial. If someone arrests him, he will be rewarded. If they wanted the DF to carry out that coup, they would have carried it out with the money that was given in Moscow," said witness Sinđelić's collaborator before the Podgorica High Court, among other things.
After the process ended, Sinđelić gave controversial statements to the media in which he denied what he said before the court, while in some he even confirmed that a coup d'état was being prepared. Video clips with his statements were published in March 2019, on the day when the parties in the proceedings were supposed to give their closing arguments.
The trial continues tomorrow with the reading of evidence.
Accepting the appeals of the defense attorney, the Appellate Court of Montenegro annulled the first-instance verdict in this case.
"The panel annulled the first-instance verdict because in the process of its adoption and in the verdict itself, significant violations of the provisions of the criminal procedure were committed, and because of which neither the factual nor the legal conclusions in the first-instance verdict could be accepted, both in relation to the existence of the criminal offenses for which the accused were charged guilty, as well as in relation to the existence of their guilt for those acts", stated in the announcement of the Appellate Court.
They then clarified that, deciding in the second-instance proceedings on the reported appeals against the verdict of the special division of the High Court in Podgorica, they accepted the appeals of the defense attorneys of the accused and the appeal of the accused Bratislava Dikić, in the part in which the accused were declared guilty of having committed the criminal acts of creating a criminal organization and terrorism in an attempt to...
With the overturned verdict, the leaders of the Democratic Front (DF) Andrija Mandić and Milan Knežević were sentenced to five years in prison each, for, as the indictment states, membership in a criminal organization since February 2016. The organizers of that group - Russians Eduard Šišmakov and Vladimir Popov - were sentenced to a total of 27 years in prison.
The former commander of the Serbian Gendarmerie Bratislav Dikić was sentenced to a single sentence of eight years, and Predrag Bogićević and Nemanja Ristić to seven years in prison.
By the same decision, Srboljub Đorđević and Milan Dušić were each sentenced to one and a half years in prison, Branka Milić to three years in prison, Dragan Maksić to one year and nine months in prison, while Kristina Hristić was given a suspended sentence.
DF driver Mihailo Čađenović was sentenced to one year and six months in prison. The indictment states that the two Russians organized a criminal group and recruited other members for the purpose of obtaining illegal profits and power, violently overthrowing the government and declaring the DF electoral victory and preventing Montenegro from joining the NATO alliance.
The criminal organization, it is stated, planned to, on the day of the parliamentary elections on October 16, 2016, with the help of the Democratic Front, clash with the Montenegrin police and forcefully occupy the Parliament of Montenegro, as well as to kidnap and kill the then prime minister and the current president of Montenegro. Milo Đukanović.
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N: As Saša Sinđelić testified
Sinđelić's testimony in the previous court proceedings was one of the main pieces of evidence for the conviction, which was overturned by the Appellate Court of Montenegro after appeals by the defense attorney.
In the first-instance verdict, it was stated, among other things, "that the criminal organization was formed at the beginning of 2016, it follows from the testimony of Saša Sinđelić, who stated that he received a strange message from Edi, who was found to be the accused Eduard Šišmakov, in which he mentioned Montenegro directly to him for the first time, in the sense that this cannot be done in Montenegro anymore, that the government of Đukanović needs to be overthrown, that the people need to take to the streets and bring down that criminal gang, to which his associate witness replied that such a thing should be done. With this goal, there were more frequent departures than before, at the beginning of March 2016, of the accused Mandić and Knežević, during which period Sinđelić received a message from Šišmakov, from which it is clear that he was thinking about the engagement of Sinđelić as a member of a criminal organization. According to the court's order, these trips to Russia cannot be explained in any other way when all other established facts are taken into account. It follows from the testimony of the associate witness Saša Sinđelić that on September 27, 09, when he was in Moscow, Šišmakov presented him with a criminal plan for October 2019, 16, when the elections were held in Montenegro, and said that he had a conversation with to the leaders of the Democratic Front, that they were coming, that they were constantly annoying, that they would no longer tolerate them, that it had come to the point that it had to be resolved once and for all, to go to the end..." it is stated in that verdict.
Bonus video:
