The evidence from The Hague opens up both war and justice crimes?

The Special State Prosecutor's Office (STP) should, in the next two years, on the basis of the analysis of existing data, as well as the evidence obtained from the Residual Mechanism in The Hague, possibly reopen investigations in the cases of war crimes committed in Montenegro - Deportation, Bukovica, Morinj - which had been concluded by force of law. and the Monk's lie.

Such a conclusion can be drawn from the recently adopted Strategy for the Investigation of War Crimes 2024 - 2027, with the accompanying two-year Action Plan, prepared by the Supreme State Prosecutor's Office.

"Taking into account the recent amendments to the Law on Criminal Procedure, which enabled the exchange of information and the retrieval of evidence from the International Residual Mechanism, a more comprehensive analysis of documents and information related to events in relation to which war crimes proceedings have already been legally concluded (Morinj, deportation, Bukovica, Kaluđerski laz), should be included in the Strategy for the coming period", it is written in the prosecutor's document, which "Vijesti" had access to.

It is the second such document adopted by the Supreme State Prosecutor's Office in the past 10 years - the Strategy on War Crimes from 2015 was a rough plan written on only three pages, without analysis of the situation, description of problems, strategic and operational goals, and was not followed up nor an action plan...

In the new Strategy, it is stated that in the earlier strategic document it was also foreseen to re-examine the legally concluded cases - Morinj, Deportacije, Bukovica and Kaluđerski laz, with the explanation that this was allegedly done, but that the cases were closed...

"After reviewing the documentation in these cases, no information was found that would serve as a basis for starting new procedures, but based on them, requests were sent to the Hague Tribunal, which did not yield results, and the cases were archived," the VDT document says.

For these four cases, investigations were conducted for years, and later court proceedings, and only the crime in the "Morinj" camp was partially ended by a final conviction, while the accused were acquitted in all other cases.

The Strategy also states that the Special State Prosecutor's Office is currently investigating seven cases of war crimes, while two court proceedings for war crimes are ongoing.

Since the end of June, the SDT has been conducting an investigation against former chief special prosecutor Milivoj Katnić, who is suspected of having committed a "war crime against the civilian population" in the Cavtat area during 1992.

Deportations are the biggest crime

The cases of Deportacije, Morinj, Kaluđerski laz and Bukovica, which are recognized in the Strategy for the Investigation of War Crimes as key for the proactive work of the SDT, were mentioned the most times by the readers in the survey on the "Vijesti" portal, and when asked - which is the most difficult war crime that happened in Montenegro?

Of the 636 people who answered the questionnaire, 98 of them stated that this was the case - the deportation of Bosnian-Herzegovinian refugees in May 1992.

"Serb refugees were forcibly mobilized, while Bosniaks were handed over directly to death", is just one of the comments of the survey participants.

At that time, Montenegrin police illegally arrested at least 66, and according to some estimates 88 civilians, mostly Muslims, and then handed them over to the Bosnian Serb army as hostages. Only 12 of them survived the handover from the collection center in Herceg Novi.

During two court proceedings before the High Court in Podgorica, then police officers Branko Bujić, Sreten Glendža, Božidar Stojović, Milorad Šljivančanin, Boško Bojović, Milisav Marković, Radoje Radulović, Duško Bakrač and Milorad Ivanović were acquitted.

In explaining the verdict, the court stated that during the trial it was not proven that the accused were on one of the sides in the armed conflict, which was allegedly necessary for the existence of a war crime.

During the proceedings, it was established that the accused acted according to the order of the then Minister of Internal Affairs, Pavle Bulatović - to return persons who came to Montenegro from Bosnia and Herzegovina to the territory of that country.

In his analysis for "Vijesti", lawyer Velija Murić stated that the case of Deportation is made even more difficult by the fact that it is, as he said, a classic state crime in which the government of the time, the Ministry of Interior, the police force...

"Programmed action with the undoubted knowledge that people are being hunted, collected and sent to direct death, and with the undisguised intention that by this act the state of Montenegro is siding with one of the warring parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina. What also makes it special is the fact that at that time there was no state of war in Montenegro, that at that time there was and was an active prosecutor's office, which, as is still the case today, closed its eyes to the law, leaving aside the most responsible people, who the highest state functions", believes Murić, who since the 90s, first through activism in the non-governmental sector, and later as an actor in prosecution and court processes, has been following and investigating cases of war crimes in Montenegro.

The lawyer believes that responsibility in this case is not difficult to demystify...

"The military dispatch of Karadžić's (Radovan) fighters arrived at the Government's desk, was sent to police stations via the MUP and the manhunt began. So, there are no secrets here, but as one representative of the prosecution stated in 2021 at a publicly held panel: 'Until now, there has not been enough political will to investigate war crimes'. "Are those words a confirmation that all these years the prosecutor's office was acting on the orders of the political centers", asked Murić.

Morinj, Kaluđerski laz...

In the "Vijesti" questionnaire, 67 respondents, i.e. 10 percent of all who responded to the survey, stated that the worst crime that happened in Montenegro was the "Morinj" camp.

In the collection center in Boka, at least 169 Croatian prisoners of war and civilians, who were brought from the Dubrovnik battlefield, survived torture and inhuman treatment by members of the JNA in the period from October 1991 to August '92. year.

In 2012, JNA members Ivo Gojnić, Spiro Lučić, Ivo Menzalin and Boro Gligić were sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison for war crimes in the Morinj camp, while Mlađen Govedarica and Zlatko Tarle were acquitted.

It was the third final verdict by which someone in Montenegro was convicted of war crimes.

Montenegrin courts have conclusively proven guilt for war crimes in two more cases - in 1994, five members of the Army of the Republika Srpska were convicted in absentia for the murder of the three-member Klapuh family near Plužine, who on July 6, 1992 tried to find salvation from the wartime Foča in Crna It's burning.

They were killed and then thrown from the bridge into Piva.

Eight years later, Serbian citizen Nebojša Ranisavljević was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the High Court of Bjelo Polje for the crime in Štrpci, when members of the Army of the Republika Srpska at the train station on February 27, 1993, took him out of a train traveling between Belgrade and Bar. killed 20 passengers, civilians of non-Serb nationality.

"The case ended with one accused and one verdict. The fact that the accused openly confirmed the names of a number of participants in the crime against Bosniaks during the trial before the prosecutor Milan Radović, that some of those persons were examined as witnesses during the trial, was of no significance to the then prosecutor. "Fifteen years later, in the Sarajevo and Belgrade court proceedings about the same event, those witnesses of the then prosecutor Radović were given the status of defendants," explained Murić.

In the "Vijesti" survey, the crime in Štrpci was mentioned by 68 respondents, who stated that it was one of the most serious war crimes, while the murder of the Klapuh family was mentioned by five of them.

Kaluđerski laz - a village near Rožaj, not far from the border with Kosovo, during the war in Kosovo in 1999, it was a place of salvation for tens of thousands of Albanians, who sought protection in Montenegro during that period.

The culmination of violence against Albanian refugees from Kosovo took place on April 18, 1999. Then the JNA members, as it is believed, killed six and wounded five refugees. In just over a month, 22 people of Albanian nationality were killed in that area, and all those killed were civilians, including old people, women and children.

In the "Vijesti" survey, 45 people mentioned the monk's lie, who stated in an anonymous questionnaire that it was one of the most serious war crimes committed in Montenegro.

The initiation of the process against the suspects for this crime was very slow, like all other processes for war crimes in Montenegro.

After a five-year trial in the High Court in Bijelo Polje in 2013, all the accused - lieutenant colonel Predrag Strugar, as well as ex-soldiers Momčilo Barjaktarović, Petar Labudović, Aco Knežević, Branislav Radić, Miro Bojović, Vladimir Đurašković and Boro Novaković - were acquitted.

In the survey, participants also mentioned war crimes between and during the two world wars - Šahović, the massacre of Albanians in Bar in 1945, the massacre in Murin, the killing of 8.000 Muslims by the Chetniks, the genocide in Srebrenica, the attack on Dubrovnik...

"They are all evil and difficult because they carry a collective trauma. The killers were not prosecuted, which sends the message that the crimes can be repeated, because there is no adequate punishment," he wrote in one of the more striking answers to the "Vijesti" questionnaire.

Murić: The perpetrators are proudly walking around Montenegro

The new document also says that the Strategy for the Investigation of War Crimes in Montenegro since 2015 has, as stated, produced certain results and that it obliged the Special State Prosecutor's Office (STP) to take a proactive approach and act...

"SDT cooperated with the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague with the aim of having special prosecutors working on war crimes cases, as well as their associates, stay in The Hague. To give them access to all the databases available to the Hague Tribunal, which refer to all court proceedings conducted before that court, in order to determine by searching the data whether there is any evidence that would indicate that Montenegrin citizens have committed war crimes crime, and which could be used as evidence before the competent court in Montenegro", the prosecutor's document says.

Lawyer Velija Murić claims, as he stated for "Vijesti", that "nothing was done" according to the first Prosecutor's Strategy from 2015.

"There are no new revelations, there are no perpetrators walking 'proudly' around Montenegro, there are no investigations, there are no accusations either. This one from 2024, which was recently presented, really reflects a certain determination to finally start from the starting position after three decades. The Gordian knot for everything expected is the will, which, like a 'guilty curse', is not yet there, and especially the answer to the question of whether the prosecution has resolved the problem of 'political will', which has been preventing, hindering or even blocking all these years to start research of war crimes", believes Murić.

The new document states that since 2015, SDT, in cooperation with prosecutors from the region and the Residual Mechanism, has been given extensive documentation for taking over criminal prosecution in cases where Montenegrin citizens are suspected of having committed a war crime.

"After receiving the documentation from the Residual Mechanism, in November 2020, the Special Investigation Team mainly carried out the identification. However, in the annual reports on the work of the SDT, as well as in the reports on the implementation of the Strategy itself, these lists are not explicitly mentioned for the reason that the Prosecutor's Office is obliged to preserve the data in the investigation phase", the new Strategy says.

The document enumerates data from the SDT report on the implementation of recommendations from SIRZ 2015, where it is written that from the beginning of the implementation of the Strategy until the end of 2023, eight suspects were questioned in reconnaissance and investigations.

"Based on requests from Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, five suspects were interrogated. In the same period, 36 witnesses were heard (both in investigations and in investigations). 35 witnesses were heard based on requests from the state and requests sent to other countries (Serbia, Croatia, BiH and Kosovo). Regarding the identification of the case, legal qualification and type of responsibility, in three cases the establishment of legal qualification and prosecution took place, of which one was concluded before the court, one is in court proceedings, and in the third, an order was issued to conduct an investigation, which in current", the document says.

Veselin Veljović might explain the details about Bukovica

According to lawyer Velija Murić, the state of Montenegro is responsible for the crime in Bukovica near Pljevlja.

"The details of the events from that time could perhaps be clarified by Veselin Veljović, who at that time was a police officer and served in that area, and as Nataša Kandić from Humanitarian Law confirms, many Muslims still remember him. How only he can explain it," emphasized Murić.

He appealed to the prosecutor's office to open the page of Bukovica from Pljevlja once again, and to investigate the relationship between the then Government and the MUP, and especially the individuals who are behind the suffering of innocent people.

On the "Vijesti" questionnaire, 57 respondents wrote that the Bukovica case is one of the biggest crimes committed in Montenegro.

Bukovica, close to Pljevlja, on the tri-border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, is known as the only territory in Montenegro where ethnic cleansing was carried out in the 90s.

According to available information, at the beginning of 1992, 24 villages were displaced, and from 1992 to 1995, six civilians were killed. 11 people were abducted and taken to prison in Čajniče, and two committed suicide as a result of the torture, while an additional 70 civilians were subjected to physical torture, including extreme forms of humiliation and rape.

In the villages of Bukovica, at least eight houses and a village mosque were set on fire, and around 125 families with 330 members were displaced...

The investigation into that crime was opened in 2007, and included seven former members of the reserve forces of the police and the Yugoslav Army.

The indictment was brought in March 2010 against Radmil Đuković, Radiša Đuković, Slobodan Cvetković, Milorad Brković, Đorđe Gogić, Slaviša Cvrkota and Radoman Šubarić, but they were all acquitted in 2011 by the verdict of the Bjelo Polje High Court.