Podgorica Basic Court Judge Larisa Mijušković Stamatović announced that on March 17, she will pronounce the verdict on five police officers accused of extorting statements from Marko Boljević through severe violence in the investigation of the bombings of the "Grand" bar and the house of former secret agent Duško Golubović.
Police inspectors Danilo Grbović, Dalibor Ljekočević, Bojan Vujačić, Ivan Peruničić and Nemanja Vujošević are responsible for this criminal offense.
They are on trial on charges that on May 25, 2020, they violently extorted a statement from a Podgorica resident, who then accused three fellow citizens of bombings, who were later acquitted.
Injured witness Marko Boljević said in the courtroom that he stands by his legal representative's statements and agrees with his closing arguments.
Yesterday, before giving her closing arguments, Prosecutor Romina Vlahović changed the factual description of the indictment in the part that refers to Boljević's injuries.
After that, she quoted the statements of the accused and witnesses, mostly police officers, assessing that their statements were illogical, contradictory, inaccurate and designed to avoid criminal responsibility.
She cited parts of the statements of former police officials Miloš Vučinić and Srđan Korac, who was the direct superior of the five accused.
"It is absurd and illogical that Miloš Vučinić and Srđan Korać did not know what their employees, the defendants here, were doing," she said, adding that the statements of the two witnesses were designed to help the defendants, but also with the aim of avoiding possible criminal liability.
In her closing arguments, she said that the court should give credence to the statements of the injured party and his father, who claimed that he saw his son with injuries that were visible from the plane that same night after being processed and questioned at the Podgorica prosecutor's office.
She proposed to the court that the defendants be found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison.
Boljević's attorney, attorney Novica Milošević, said that he fully believes the injured party's statement, that he agrees with the prosecutor's closing arguments and is filing a claim for damages.
One of the defendants' defense attorneys, attorney Marko Radović, proposed to the court to release the five police officers, stating that the prosecution was tactical with the indictment, and that the evidence presented did not prove that the defendants committed the criminal offense they were charged with.
"Although we initially opposed the super-expertise, I believe that by verifying the findings and opinions of the expert, you have hammered a nail into this indictment," lawyer Radović told judge Mijušković Stamatović.
He pointed out that the prosecution was obliged to clearly state in the factual description of the criminal offense in what capacity the injured party Boljević gave his statement before the ODT in Podgorica, and that this statement was precisely the consequence of the torture he allegedly suffered.
"This same prosecutor's office used tactics, and only after the court in the first trial did not give credence to Boljević's disputed statement and issued an acquittal, did it decide to initiate this proceeding, although until the end of that trial the prosecution treated Boljević's disputed statement as true and, more importantly, legally valid. The court did not treat Boljević's disputed statement in that first case as legally invalid, and even less did this same prosecutor's office make any objections to that effect. On the contrary, although the court was obliged to separate this record from the case file as legally invalid, because it was allegedly obtained through torture and abuse, i.e. extortion, it did not do so, but only assessed it through the evidence assessment procedure and did not give it credence. Therefore, by the final judgment of the Basic Court in Podgorica K.br. "505-20 this statement was treated as legally valid evidence, so in such a state of affairs, the question justifiably arises as to how it can now be treated as extorted in these proceedings, as a separate criminal offense," said Radović in his closing remarks.
He also stated that it was more than obvious that by reporting the disputed event, the injured party wanted to justify himself to the persons he had named in his statement and who he stated he was afraid of.
He added that Boljević's statement was refuted by the statements of the defendants and other evidence presented - the testimony of police officers and polygraph examiners: "Who were decisive that the injured party did not show any visible traces of injury or stress during the polygraph test, because in that case he could not have been tested."
Radović said that a peculiar curiosity of this procedure is the fact that the main evidence that confirms the defense's allegations and refutes the allegations of the injured party and the prosecution is the testimony of the prosecutor employed in the same prosecutor's office, Ivana Vuksanović, who questioned the injured party on May 25, 2020.
Citing the prosecutor's statement, he said that she clearly stated that Boljević did not have any injuries when giving his testimony: "Let alone visible ones."
"There was no suspicion of any torture, nor did Boljević complain in that regard, and it was precisely with his signature on the record that he confirmed that he had given the disputed statement voluntarily."
Bonus video:
