Despite the fact that the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica filed an indictment against Danilo Mandić on June 24, on the basis of which his detention was extended two days later, that indictment was not delivered to either the accused or his defense attorney, attorney Miroj Jovanović.
This is stated in the appeal against the extension of detention, which was submitted by Jovanović.
In his appeal, he lists, as he claims, a series of serious violations of the law and the defendant's constitutional rights, which are why he is requesting the decision to be overturned and Mandić's immediate release.
The nephew of the Speaker of the Parliament, Andrija Mandić, is accused of wounding Darko Perović and Aris Turković in the center of the capital on April 19. He has been in custody since April 21, and in the meantime, the Higher State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica assessed that the actions of this informal bodyguard of the head of the parliament, Andrija Mandić, did not constitute the elements of the criminal offense of attempted aggravated murder, for which an investigation was conducted. Therefore, the case was forwarded for further proceedings to the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica.
"I propose that the appeal be upheld, the contested decision be annulled, possibly modified, and the defendant be immediately released, given that numerous substantive and procedural violations of the defendant's rights were committed in the proceedings preceding the decision. The contested decision is an example of judicial intervention by a biased court based on template explanations, which abstractly repeat legal formulations without any concrete analysis of the relevant circumstances of the case. Moreover, the first-instance court superficially analyzes and incorrectly interprets the statements of four witnesses, out of a total of 11 heard, and does not even mention the statements of the two injured parties," the appeal against the Basic Court's decision states.
As a basic argument, the defense states that neither the defendant nor his defense attorney received the indictment to which the court's decision refers, which, Jovanović explains, is a direct violation of the Criminal Procedure Code and the right to a fair trial.
"Article 447, paragraph 2, requires that the indictment be submitted in the required number of copies for the court and the defendant, which means that the defense must receive a copy before any court decision based on that document. By failing to submit the indictment to the defense, the court acted contrary to these imperative provisions. The defense did not know what the defendant was formally charged with in the said indictment, nor could it compare the reasons for detention with the content of the indictment," the complaint, which "Vijesti" had access to, states.
They suspect the judge is biased.
Special emphasis in the appeal was placed on the alleged bias of judge Željka Jovović, who had previously been disqualified from a similar case due to previous proceedings against officials of the same political group in which Mandić was employed as a driver.
"The conduct of Judge Željka Jovović constitutes a violation of the right to an impartial trial based on objective criteria - there is no evidence for reasonable suspicion that the defendant committed a criminal offense, there is no allegation of the form/type of guilt of the defendant under Article 13 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the legal grounds for detention under Article 448 of the Criminal Procedure Code have not been met, all injuries are of the nature of minor bodily injuries within the meaning of Article 152 of the Criminal Procedure Code, there is an erroneous and incompletely established factual situation, within the meaning of Article 388 of the Criminal Procedure Code, given that the evidence does not confirm the defendant's participation," the complaint states.
In that submission, the lawyer also cited statements from the text published in "Vijesti", which refers to the correspondence between Judge Jovović and the former President of the Supreme Court, Vesna Medenica.
"Correspondence was published that directly concerns the political organization/then part of the coalition in which the defendant is an official driver," the complaint states.
"A judge who has already been disqualified once due to the loss of the appearance of impartiality cannot act again in cases of the same group, especially if her previous action included informally commenting on the decision before it was delivered to the parties," Jovanović wrote, specifying that the same judge was then disqualified from acting in the case of one of the leaders of the Democratic Front, Milan Knežević.
"Judge Željka Jovović should not have acted in this case. The obligation to recuse was not a matter of personal judgment or ethical dilemma - but a legal duty arising from clearly established facts and a prior formal recuse," he wrote.
Jovanović states: "The detention was extended based on a motion, an indictment that the defense never saw, let alone analyzed, which is legally inadmissible."
He explained that this violated Article 12 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which requires that the defendant be provided with sufficient time and opportunity to prepare his defense.
"This includes specific time for examining the allegations of the indictment in relation to the factual and legal reasons stated in the detention order. Without the indictment being submitted, the defense had neither the content nor the deadline in relation to which to prepare a procedural statement," the appeal states.
Jovanović states that the formal existence of a defense attorney has been rendered irrelevant - because he was not provided with the key document of the procedure for the commencement of the proceedings.
There's a lot between the lines.
In his appeal, attorney Jovanović cited the statements of all witnesses, especially Perović, whom he asked at the hearing at the Higher State Prosecutor's Office whether he allowed the possibility that the questioning before the inspectors, and considering the state the witness was in due to substance use, subjectively experienced the communication with the police officers as blackmail, and that what he first stated was closer to the truth: "There was a lot between the lines."
"I was in chaos and in a very difficult psychological state, and there was a lot going on between the lines. And what I would like to repeat is that Danilo Mandić did not shoot Darko Perović," Perović replied at the time.
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