The Judicial Council has confirmed the resignation of Court of Appeal judge Vesna Moštrokol, who presided over the three-member panel in the "coup d'état" case...
On December 24 last year, the court concluded a session of the panel regarding the appeal of the Special State Prosecutor's Office against the acquittal of politicians Andrija Mandić and Milan Knežević, among others, on charges of attempted terrorism on the day of the 2016 parliamentary elections, namely the violent seizure of the Parliament of Montenegro.
The public has not been informed whether the trial panel has reached a verdict in this case. Once the verdict is reached, the panel is obliged to publish it, and then within a month, and no longer than two months, it is obliged to write it and deliver it to the parties.
Several legal experts told Vijesti that the proceedings before the Court of Appeal must be repeated due to a change in the composition of the trial panel in the event that it did not vote on the verdict, while it is not clear whether this is mandatory otherwise.
One of the interviewees said that he could not remember a similar case in his long career, especially not before the Court of Appeals.
In addition to Moštrokol, the panel that decided on the appeal in one of the most significant cases in the Montenegrin judiciary of the last decade included judge Zorica Milanović as rapporteur and judge Predrag Tabaš as a panel member.
Moštrokol's resignation, as stated in the statement of the Judicial Council, was announced at the personal request of the judge of the Court of Appeals, without explaining what led to such a decision.
In June last year, SDT prosecutors Zoran Vučinić and Siniša Milić filed an appeal against the acquittal in the "coup d'état" case, which was handed down in the summer of 2024, due to a significant violation of criminal procedure and erroneously established facts, stating that the three-member panel of the Higher Court, chaired by Judge Zoran Radović, "arbitrarily and factually unfoundedly gave reasons for not accepting and not giving credence to the testimony of the witness collaborator Saša Sinđelić."
They believe that, if the Panel had properly assessed all the facts, statements and evidence, the Court would have drawn the only correct conclusion regarding the testimony of the cooperating witness and accepted it as true.
The SDT appeal states that the Higher Court, when acquitting, flatly concluded that the testimony of the cooperating witnesses was "characteristic of learned testimony", stating that they "do not possess the professional knowledge to assess Sinđelić's cognitive abilities".
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