Before the special panel presided over by judge Zoran Radović, today in the High Court in Podgorica, the retrial in the "coup d'état" case continued with the reading of written evidence.
The wife of the accused Milan Knežević, witness Tamara Magdelinić Knežević, used the legal opportunity not to testify in the repeated proceedings against the accused for allegedly preparing terrorism on the day of the parliamentary elections in October 2016.
It is planned that her hearing will be conducted from the courtroom of the High Court in Belgrade via video link.
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 I blame, 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.
Bonus video:
