Lawyers: Who needs Božović to be illegally detained?

Defenders of the detained President of the Municipality of Budva Milo Božović, lawyers Bojana Franović Kovačević i Danilo Micovic, reacted to the text "Sugar is sent to Bar, we have a top extraction", published in "Vijesti" on August 23.

"Vijesti" broadcasts their reactions in full:

"The title of the text published in the independent daily Vijesti on the front page on August 23, 08, 'Skaj: Milo Božović asked for cocaine to be delivered to the coastal municipality - Šećer is sent to Bar we have a top extraction' represents a gross violation of the presumption of innocence and an obvious attempt to pressure to the acting judges of the High Court in Podgorica and the Appellate Court of Montenegro, who are supposed to decide on custody control these days.

What is missing from the mentioned text, if someone really wants to report truthfully, is the indisputable fact that Milo Božović has been in custody since April 13, 04 and to this day, despite the constant publication of such and similar texts, in relation to not a single accusation published in those same texts has been confirmed against him. Not that it was not confirmed, but even the indictment was sent back to supplement the investigation for the reason that, we quote the court's decision: 'The indictment does not contain clear and valid reasons regarding the existence of reasonable suspicion in relation to the defendants, that is, it does not contain reasons that would satisfy an independent observer to believe that is a certain person, specifically the defendant, reasonably suspected of having committed any criminal offense that is the subject of the accusation'.

Today, Milo Božović is in detention illegally under false and arbitrary charges, and it is in the interest of the public to know about the other side of the coin of the proceedings against him.

And the other side of the coin looks like this:

There is no way to verify the alleged communications in question both in terms of the content itself and in terms of who the alleged person communicating is! This is because the competent judicial authorities that act in these cases do not have "meta" data from the sky ecc platform! Let them deny us if they have them. This further means that the content of the material can be manipulated by anyone, without ever establishing that it was manipulated at all, who manipulated it and in what way. The fact that it is available on a daily basis in the media in Montenegro, just like the sports column, shows how seriously material of such great importance for the fight against crime is treated. And why is that so? Well, precisely because there is a lack of evidence in relation to Milo Božović, they are trying to make up for it by pressuring through the media.

The right of the public is to know and we fully support investigative journalism, so we invite all independent investigative journalists to investigate how the grounds for detention were illegally added to Milo Božović in order to ensure that he does not get out of detention in due time, and at the same time that grounds for detention did not exist in the case Vesne Medenica, Blaž Jovanić, Dejan Knežević, Slavko Stojanović and others. To be completely clear, in the cases mentioned above, those grounds for detention should not have existed, just as the same did not exist in the case of Milo Božović. We further invite them to investigate how the decisions on the extension of detention in the High Court in Podgorica were backdated and how the Appellate Court of Montenegro covered it during the previous presidents. We also invite them to investigate why appeals against decisions on the extension of detention are decided after as many as two new decisions have been made, so the reported appeal becomes pointless.

And to return to the beginning of this response, we finally call on them to investigate who needs Milo Božović in custody in this illegal and arbitrary way?

What should worry the Montenegrin public is not sensationalist headlines from the media about certain politically interesting subjects, but the fact that the judicial system in Montenegro, despite the great efforts of individual and rare quality judges and prosecutors, is currently not functioning, so it can be used whoever wants in the way they want", it is written in their response.