Brajović: The French judiciary only sent Sky correspondence and nothing else, no court decisions, or how they got them

The trial of those accused of the murders of Serbian citizens Filip Marjanović and Vukašin Gošović in the village of Jelenak near Danilovgrad continued today at the Higher Court in Podgorica.

Attorney Dušan Jovović pointed out that as the defense attorney for the defendant Milovan Sekulović, he had previously pointed out, during the confirmation of the indictment, the legal invalidity of all evidence obtained through letters rogatory. He stated that there are no letters rogatory relating to the defendants here, nor any accompanying documentation.

"The defense does not have any letters of request regarding the identity of the accused. There is no purpose in requesting information, nor is there a request for the submission of PIN data. This documentation is not on the CD that was submitted to the defense. I ask the court to check this documentation and submit it to the defense. We would point out that this is legally invalid evidence and there would be a proposal to remove it from the case file. The defense cannot comment on the evidence until we have reviewed this documentation," said Jovović.

The defense attorney for the defendant Stefan Janković, attorney Maja Turković, agreed with the position of her colleague Jovović and added.

"I would suggest that a digital expert examination be conducted, because in relation to the accused Janković, the accusation is based solely on Sky Communications, which is not confirmed by any personal or material evidence," she pointed out.

Completing his defense before the court, the defendant Milan Brajović today challenged the Sky ECC communications in detail. In doing so, he referred to several expert findings both here and in Europe.

"First of all, the French judiciary only sent Sky correspondence and nothing else, not a single court decision, or how they obtained them. The delivery note itself does not indicate who the users of the PINs are, because the French authorities did not do that, and only the PIN correspondence that the requesting state did was provided. It follows from this that the identity of the user is based on the operational knowledge of the requesting state, without other evidence, and not from the French judiciary, so it is unclear how they obtained the measures and hacking from the state of the alleged user, when they did not know who the PIN user was. This leads us to the conclusion that this is mass surveillance, not targeted, as is claimed. The identity of the user alone cannot be based on data of an operational nature or police knowledge. In addition, these tables, apart from communication, do not contain data on how the hacking of this data occurred. Which means that it is not possible to review the legality of who, when and where collected the data from the server," said Brajović.

He stated that the home appliance sales company "Elektron" had hacked the data.

"I want to emphasize that Sky Ecc was intercepted by the company 'Elektron', for which we do not even know if it has a license. Through the search, we came to know that this company sells household appliances. According to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, evidence that was obtained illegally or that was contaminated in the middle of a chain break and the absence of guarantees of integrity must be separated and cannot be used to reach a guilty verdict. I ask the court to request from SDT the authorization of these pins and the binary software that was used because it does not support Excel, but someone manually entered and changed the data. On the CD that we received from SDT, there is a folder named pins that bind us. When we open it and enter the excel form, pin. At the very end, there are two columns called SOURCE. In the first 'source', there is a long address in which the 'bin' part is located. That 'bin' is a clear indicator that the excel messages are not original because it would say XCL, but rather binary software and that is why it says 'bin'. The source column is the corpus delict that the Excel messages are not the original but that it is binary software and the messages from it were not submitted by the prosecution. The European Court of Justice (C-670/22) emphasized that evidence obtained through international legal assistance must be submitted in such a way that the other state has the opportunity to verify proportionality and legality. If only a "translated" file is submitted, this is not fulfilled. If the evidence is based only on Excel tables and translations of messages, and the original bin /json files/ are not submitted, then the chain of custody of evidence is missing. We do not have the opportunity to verify the authenticity and integrity of the files. Article 6 of the European Charter of Human Rights, among other things, stipulates that fair equality between the parties to the proceedings must be ensured in an attempt to achieve the ideal of equality of arms," ​​said Brajović, among other things.

The trial continues on May 13.

According to the prosecution, Emil Tuzović, Stefan Đukić Mandić, Milan Brajović, Goran Milašinović, Stefan Janković, Ivan Čarapić and Milovan Sekulović, during the second half of 2019, together with the late Damir Hodžić, became members of a criminal organization organized in the territory of Montenegro by the late Mile Radulović and Alan Kožar. In addition to this criminal offense, they are also charged with the aggravated murder of Serbian citizens Filip Marjanović and Vukašin Gošović.

The indictment states that the criminal organization aimed to commit criminal offenses in order to gain illegal power. In the way that the late Mile Radulović and Alan Kožar recruited the defendants, either themselves or through other persons, as members of the criminal organization, in order to commit murder and aggravated murder. Thus, the defendants Emil Tuzović, Stefan Đukić Mandić and the late Damir Hodžić had the task of acting on the orders of the late Mile Radulović and Alan Kožar as organizers, to, together with the late Alan Kožar and the defendant Milan Brajović, deprive the members of the opposing criminal organization of their lives, whom the late Mile Radulović and Alan Kožar had ordered to be killed out of ruthless revenge and to first extort from them all information about the activities of the opposing criminal organization.

By which the defendants Emil Tuzović, Stefan Đukić Mandić, Milan Brajović, Goran Milašinović, Ivan Čarapić and Milovan Sekulović committed the criminal offense of creating a criminal organization.

The late Mile Radulović and Alan Kožar, as organizers, in the second half of 2019, created a criminal plan to ruthlessly kill members of an opposing criminal organization, citizens of the Republic of Serbia Filip Marjanović and Vukašin Gošović, in a cruel manner, out of ruthless revenge, for whom the organizers had information that they had previously killed a member of their criminal organization, Zijad Nurković. After the injured parties agreed to come from the Republic of Serbia on September 15, 2019 and enter Montenegro via border crossings, they hired the defendants Čarapić and Sekulović, who were nicknamed "Šljuka" and "Naočarko" in the criminal organization, to use a Peugeot 207 vehicle provided for that purpose by the defendant Emil Tuzović, to wait for and accept the injured parties Filip Marjanović and Vukašin Gošović after their illegal entry into Montenegro, and then transport the injured parties and hand them over to the defendant Emil Tuzović, which the defendants Ivan Čarapić and Milovan Sekulović accepted.

By creating conditions and removing obstacles for the commission of the criminal offense, they intentionally assisted the defendant Emil Tuzović in the commission of the criminal offense of aggravated murder, and the defendant Goran Milašinović in the commission of the criminal offense of aggravated murder by aiding and abetting. They transported and handed over to the defendant Emil Tuzović, who was waiting for them with a BMW X4 vehicle, which was ceded to him for this purpose by the defendant Goran Milašinović, and on that occasion transferred the suitcases of the injured parties to the BMW X4 vehicle. After which the defendant Emil Tuzović transported the injured parties to Spuži, where the defendant Milan Brajović and Stefan Đukić Mandić waited for them at a currently unspecified commercial facility so that the defendant Brajović, as a local resident, could show them the way to the village of Jelenak, and then they transported the injured parties together to the house that the defendant Milan Brajović had provided in that village.

The indictment states that they forcibly extorted information from the injured parties Filip Marjanović and Vukašin Gošović that they, as direct perpetrators, deprived the life of a member of their criminal organization, Zijad Nurković, and attempted to kill Stefan Janković, known as "Krpa" and "Fantoma". After which, between September 15 and 16, 2019, in a cruel manner and out of ruthless revenge, the defendants Emil Tuzović and Stefan Dukić Mandić killed Filip Marjanović and Vukašin Gošović and inflicted several blows to the head and body with baseball bats.

Using the bayonet of an AK 47 automatic rifle, Tuzović inflicted multiple stab wounds on the body, from which they died. They then jointly hid the remains in a currently unknown location and removed traces and evidence of the crime. On September 16, 2019, the late Damir Hodžić informed the organizer of the criminal organization, the late Mile Radulović, via the encrypted communication application SKY ECC.

As a result, the defendants Emil Tuzović, Stefan Đukić Mandić and Milan Brajović, as co-perpetrators, committed the criminal offense of aggravated murder, and the defendants Goran Milašinović, Ivan Čarapić and Milovan Sekulović committed the criminal offense of aggravated murder by aiding and abetting.