Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic announced that the current plaque in Morinje will be replaced by a new one that will factually state who is responsible for the war crime committed at the site of the former military facility.
Abazović claims that the Government was not aware that the plaque would be erected and rejects interpretations that he is against commemorating crimes by erecting the plaque.
"We are in favor of putting up the plaque in accordance with the law, what is being put up now was put up contrary to the law without the knowledge of the Government and Municipality of Kotor and the consent of the Ministry of Culture. People (former ministers of foreign affairs Ranko Krivokapic and defense Rasko Konjević) have committed a criminal offence. They had a political interest and did such a thing," Abazović told "Vijesti".
He adds that the official Croatia has been informed and that during the meeting with the Prime Minister of Croatia, Andrej Plenković, he tried to explain that there is no problem with the marking, but that it was not done in accordance with the procedures.
"We spoke with the President of the Municipality of Kotor, Vladimir Jokić, they just need to send a letter to the Government that they are ready for a sign to be placed there. With the text that they (Krivokapić and Konjević) put there, we cannot amnesty the then government in Montenegro. We cannot assume that it was done by someone on behalf of Montenegro, and that Montenegro had no idea about it, that is the narrative. This is how history is falsified, rather than factually stating who was and who is responsible and replacing the board. It will be set up in accordance with the law and the corresponding text, and I think that we should complete these actions in a future period", concluded Abazović.
At the end of November, the Directorate for Inspection Affairs (UIP) submitted a criminal complaint to the Special State Prosecutor's Office (SDT) against Krivokapić and Konjević, for setting up a memorial plaque in Morinje.
The acting inspector filed the report due to, as specified in it, a violation of Article 411a of the Criminal Code, which refers to the violation and illegal erection of monuments.
"Whoever damages, destroys, alters, modifies, replaces, or removes a memorial without authorization, or erects or organizes the erection of a memorial whose erection is not permitted, shall be punished by imprisonment from one to three years," according to that provision of the Criminal Code. .
The memorial was erected in memory of the fact that in Morinje in 1991-92. for several months functioned the so-called Collection center for prisoners of war from the Dubrovnik battlefield, where numerous captured members of the Croatian forces defending Konavle and Dubrovnik from the raiding raids of Montenegrin reservists in JNA uniforms were held, as well as many Croatian civilians from that territory. A few years ago, the Montenegrin judiciary passed several convictions against the former guards in that Assembly Center, stating that they had committed war crimes because they beat and abused the detainees.
On October 10, the MFA, that is, the Ministry of Defense of Montenegro, which was then led by the then dismissed ministers from the SDP, Krivokapić and Konjević, placed a memorial plaque here, in the company of their Croatian colleagues - the Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Goran Grlić Radman and the Minister of Croatian Veterans Tom Medved. This was done without the legal procedure stipulated by the Law on Monuments and without the decision of the Government of Montenegro, i.e. the legally required consent of the Municipality of Kotor. For this reason, the UIP issued a decision on the removal of the illegal memorial board a few days later and obliged the Municipality of Kotor to implement it, but the intervention of the Municipal Inspection and the Municipal Police of Kotor on October 24 was prevented by the Army of Montenegro, whose members guard the installation of the memorial board until then, a completely abandoned former military facility in Morinje and no one is allowed to enter its circle.
The soldiers who guard the locked gate at the entrance to the complex 24 hours a day do so according to a verbal order they received from their superiors in the chain of command, at the top of which is the current Chief of the General Staff of the VCG, Brigadier General Zoran Lazović. The order according to which uniformed and armed soldiers must guard an abandoned former military facility 24 hours a day in which there is no electricity, water, or basic living conditions, so the guards alternately sleep in a military vehicle parked within the facility, and perform their physiological needs in the nearby forest, was issued while the Ministry of Defense was headed by Raško Konjević. However, the order was not canceled after Konjević's removal from the head of the Ministry of Defense, whose work has been officially coordinated by the Minister of Internal Affairs since then. Filip Adzic (HURRY).
"Vijesti" never received answers from Adžić's cabinet, to the questions of what he has done so far to enable the MoD to implement the decision of the UIP on the removal of an illegally erected memorial, i.e. to determine the circumstances under which this department enabled the do something like that in Morinje. Adžić did not even answer the question of what, from the position of acting head of the MoD, he has undertaken so far in the direction of determining which of the former or current heads of the MoD, i.e. the General Staff of the Croatian Army, issued the order on the 24-hour engagement of members of the Croatian Army to guard and secure the abandoned military facility Morinj, are there abuses by the Army and who will be held responsible for that.
By the way, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, until the day before the dismissal of Konjević and Krivokapić from their ministerial duties, publicly claimed that the legal procedure for placing the memorial plaque was not violated because it was a military facility and that in this regard, the Act on VCG was acted upon. However, as unnecessary and unpromising, the Morinj military warehouse was officially abandoned by the Croatian Army in 2006, since that facility is not under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense, but rather the Ministry of Finance, which manages state assets.
The disputed memorial plaque with a text that treats the historical circumstances in a dubious manner in 1991, when the state of Montenegro was an undoubted and willing participant in the aggression against the Republic of Croatia in the area of Konavle and Dubrovnik, was installed, as stated by the inspector for the protection of cultural property who issued the order for its removal, without "documentation that proves that the plaque in question is in the Program of Monuments adopted by the Kotor Municipal Assembly, nor that there is consent from the Government of Montenegro, because it is an event for which the prescribed 50 years have not passed since the moment of creation".
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