The Society of Professional Journalists (DPNCG) has expressed its protest over what they say is the misuse of personal/health data of "Pobjeda" journalist Ana Raičković and the violation of journalists' right to protection of sources, which, they point out, is protected by Council of Europe (CoE) standards and Montenegrin legislation.
They announced that they would ask the Personal Data Protection Agency to determine how the most protected personal data, which concerns her health record, came into the possession of unauthorized persons, and the State Prosecutor's Office to determine whether there are elements of a criminal offense in this and who committed it.
Yesterday, a hearing was held in the Podgorica Basic Court in the case against Zoran Bećirović, his son Luka Bećirović, Mladen Mijatović and Ljubiša Dukić for the attack on Ana Raičković.
"Pobjeda" announced this morning that lawyers Danilo Mićović and Marta Šćepanović, the defendants' defense attorneys, misused the journalist's personal information by presenting Judge Ilija Radulović with a report from a specialist doctor from the Clinical Center.
As the media outlet reported, the medical document is from May last year, five months before the attack on the "Pobjeda" journalist.
Judge Radulović, as reported, refused to allow the report to be used as evidence.
In a statement, the DPNCG says that it is not possible that everything is permitted in order to defend the accused, including collecting and sharing health data of journalists.
The association also disputes the court's decision to "seize the journalist's phone on the spot so that a recording from it can be expertly examined."
"Journalists' phones are today a means of work, they contain emails, correspondence, documents from whistleblowers, which means that the expert has access to the journalists' protected sources - which are guaranteed by the CoE standards. In the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights Nagla v Latvia (73469/10) - the guarantees of source protection also apply to situations when a journalist has the status of a witness. In the cases Tillack v Belgium (20477/05) and Ressiot and others v France (15054/07) - the court considers the scope of the search of the journalist's phone and belongings as an important fact and whether there were procedural guarantees to prevent excessive interference with the journalist's rights," they stated.
The opinion of the DPNCG legal advisor is that all information in the phone related to "sources" is also protected by Article 37 of the Media Law and that it can only be accessed through a precisely prescribed procedure: "If it can be accessed by circumventing the procedure from Article 37 of the Media Law, there is a violation of freedom of expression, regardless of whether it is a matter of interest to the court (and other persons who will participate in the search) or something completely different."
They state that information concerning journalistic sources must be protected from interference by public authorities and that contact with them can only be possible through Article 37 of the Media Law.
They say they are concerned about "the fact that even the Basic Court did not take into account the protection of the journalist's sources."
"As the court proceedings unfold, one gets the impression that the defense attorneys of the accused Zoran Bećirović and his associates are not choosing means to portray the journalist in a bad light, as a person who distorts the facts. Also, in the courtroom, she was photographed by people who came to support the main defendant, which she experienced as intimidation. The reason is that they are employees of Bećirović's 'Ski Center', which is the founder of the portal that is leading the campaign against Ana Raičević and Vijesti journalist Dragana Šćepanović. Let us recall that this portal commented on the health condition of her colleague from Vijesti, which clearly indicates a connection with the appearance of Bećirović's lawyers who yesterday offered Ana Raičković's health data as evidence to the Basic Court," writes the DPNCG.
They asked whether journalists would "finally be protected as victims."
"In addition to the fact that the Ministry of Interior/Police Directorate has not yet granted her security despite the assessment that she is at risk, that the defense is digging through her personal data in an attempt to minimize the consequences of the attack, that she was summoned to the Ministry of Interior as a witness under the threat of forced detention, we express our fear that this procedure is going in the same direction as some previous ones - when journalist victims were portrayed as schizophrenics, associates of organized crime, mentally unstable persons... We hope that the EU Delegation in Podgorica, the OSCE and the CoE are monitoring this process and are aware of all these facts. Despite the position of the competent authorities that attacks on journalists are unacceptable, one gets the impression that the defense of the defendants is playing by the rules in order to minimize the severity of the attack on the journalist. Will journalists finally be protected as victims, instead of allowing them to be persecuted and harassed by anyone who has the money to pay for it or to avoid responsibility for it," the statement reads.
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