Vesna Bratić's house arrest lifted

Former Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports Vesna Bratić's house arrest has been lifted, one of her defense attorneys, attorney Mitar Šušić, told "Vijesti".

He explained that all witnesses had been heard and that the reasons for the duration of the house arrest measure had ceased.

Bratić was arrested on February 16th, in an investigation by the Special State Prosecutor's Office, due to the damage caused by the dismissal of eight school principals, and because 40 principals were not dismissed.

She was initially ordered to be detained for 30 days, but the pre-trial panel of the Higher Court in Podgorica, presided over by Judge Zoran Radović, lifted the detention on February 21st and ordered her to be placed under house arrest, as well as banned from meeting with witnesses.

The former minister was placed under extended surveillance after a hearing at the SDT on February 26, where she was summoned to submit her phone for a search. Her defense attorney Mitar Šušić said at the time that Bratić could not identify whether the phone was hers or remember the password, and she said that she would not unlock it in order to prevent the content from being distributed to the media, which, she said, was the practice in the past.

Bratić held the position of minister for just over a year - from the first post-DPS government elected on December 4, 2020, to February 4, 2022, when she was voted out of office.

In the first half of her term, she dismissed almost all school principals in Montenegro.

While the opposition accused her of political revenge, Bratić justified her dismissals in education by depoliticizing the education system, claiming that some of the dismissed directors had abused educational institutions for political purposes.

After a hearing at the Special State Prosecutor's Office (SDT) in Podgorica, she was ordered to be detained, and her legal representative, attorney Mitar Šušić, told Vijesti at the time that Bratić denied any guilt and stated that she had dismissed directors legally.

In a separate case, the Basic Court ruled in mid-December that Bratić was not liable to compensate more than 15.000 euros, which were paid in 29 cases due to the unlawful dismissal of directors. The state appealed the ruling, but the High Court rejected the appeal of the Office of the Protector of Property and Legal Interests of Montenegro less than two months later - on February 6.