The trial of Darko Šarić for planning the murder of Nebojša Joksović, a key associate witness in the proceedings against Šarić for international cocaine smuggling, began today in the High Court in Belgrade.
That case is based on messages from the "Sky" application for encrypted communication, which Šarić allegedly used during 2020, even though he was then in custody in Belgrade.
The trial will continue on Friday, when Šarić and the other defendants are scheduled to present their defense.
Before the defendants start presenting their defense, judge Zoran Šešić made the final decision that the evidence from "Skaj" will be used in the proceedings. "Sky is legal evidence, it has the importance of a document," he said.
Šarić's defense attorney, Dalibor Katancevic, previously asked the court to exclude the messages from the "Skaj" application from the evidence because, as he stated, it is not known how they were obtained and therefore cannot be evidence in the proceedings. reports KRIK.
Katancevic pointed out that the evidence from "Skaj" contradicts the Constitution of Serbia because, as he stated, a foreign country is not allowed to eavesdrop on the citizens of that country without the consent of Serbia.
"This is an attempt to legalize espionage," he said.
Katancevic said that Saric was in custody all the time, which is close to the prosecution, and that the prosecution, despite all the security cameras, could not determine whether he had "Sky" phones, but instead sought proof from France.
Lawyer Marko Janković pointed out that he agrees with Katancevic and reiterated that it is not known how the French police got hold of the "Sky" messages.
"The whole of Europe is arguing about which evidentiary action was applied, only our prosecutor's office is smarter than Europe," he pointed out Janković and added that everything obtained from "Sky" communication is illegal hacking.
Šarić: I have nothing to defend myself from
"I have nothing to defend myself against, but I have to say something, if only to satisfy the media," said Šarić, declaring his plea to the charges at the beginning of today's trial.
Saric pleaded not guilty and announced that he would present his defense. The other defendants also pleaded guilty.
The prosecution and the defense previously agreed that the indictment would not be read in the courtroom, but that the statement should be made immediately.
Previously, Šarić's lawyer, Dalibor Katancevic, took the floor and requested that, before the defendants present their defense, he would present his objections to the main evidence, i.e. the content of the "Skaj" application. Judge Zoran Šešić agreed with the proposal, although he noted that it had not been previously agreed upon.
Veljko Delibašić, the lawyer of the policemen Danilo Stojanović and Milutin Radovanović, requested that the trial be closed to the public so that his clients could present classified information as part of their defense, but Judge Šešić rejected that proposal.
Accusations against Saric
Šarić was arrested in April last year in his house in Dedinje as part of an international police operation. Although the Serbian police said at the time that Šarić, among other things, was arrested as the head of a group that murdered its former member and smuggled drugs from South America to Europe, he was later not charged with either of those two crimes.
Instead, he was accused in October of last year of a lesser crime - that he planned the assassination of the associate witness Nebojša Joksović.
According to the indictment, Šarić and his associates twice planned to liquidate Joksović during 2020, who testified against Šarić in the case of cocaine smuggling from South America. It is said that Šarić wanted to take revenge on Joksović because his testimony in the drug smuggling case was crucial to convicting him as the head of a criminal group.
The group originally planned to kill Joksović at the "Drina Regatta" event, which Joksović wanted to visit, according to the indictment. Since the regatta was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, the prosecution claims that Šarić and the others came up with a new plan. The idea was to liquidate Joksović in front of his building because they noticed that the police security he has had since he became a cooperating witness is not with him all the time. The indictment did not explain why Šarić abandoned this plan.
The prosecution alleges that after two unsuccessful liquidations, Šarić wanted to discredit the witness, that is, to "implicate" Joksović that he ordered the burning of the car of his former associate Goran Nikolašević, with whom Joksović was not on good terms.
The prosecution's key evidence is based on messages exchanged by group members via the well-known secure communication application "Sky" - which was used by criminals around the world. The messages of that application were deciphered by the French police, which were later sent to different countries, including Serbia, which in 2021 started a chain of arrests across Europe.
It was revealed that Šarić, who was in detention in Belgrade in 2020 because he was on trial for drug smuggling, used phones with the "Sky" application from there. To date, however, the Serbian prosecution has not determined how this is possible, or who provided Saric with those phones.
Associates from the police and BIA
"In the operation in April last year, in addition to Šarić, his lawyer Dejan Lazarević, the well-known hooligan Uroš Radovanović (formerly Mišić), and the Inspector of the Police Service for the Fight against Organized Crime Duško Mirković were arrested," reminds KRIK. Two months later, two more important police officers surrendered: the head of the Criminal Intelligence Service, Danilo Stojanović, and his deputy, Milutin Radovanović.
Mirković is accused of delivering confidential information from the police to Šarić's lawyer Lazarević. According to the prosecution, he received 18.000 euros from the criminals for these services.
According to the indictment, Stojanović and Radovanović influenced their colleagues from the police to misdirect the investigation into the burning of Nikolašević's car towards the associate witness Joksović. Šarić rewarded them with 50.000 euros, the indictment says.
"From the 'Skaj' messages, which were cited in the indictment, it can be seen that Stojanović and Radovanović were not the most important people from the police who helped Šarić. According to the messages, these policemen helped Šarić's group with the consent of their boss in the police - whom they addressed with the nickname Edo", writes KRIK.
"I guarantee you for these guys that they don't do anything without Ed's permission, nor should they," Duško Šarić wrote about Stojanović and Radovanović in a message he sent to his brother Darko, who was in custody at the time, according to the portal.
In addition to Ed, KRIK adds, Šariž's group was helped by a mysterious agent from the Security and Information Agency (BIA), whom they addressed as Markus. "He even organized a meeting between Šarić's brother Duško and the president of the Appellate Court in Belgrade, Duško Milenkovic, in the BIA building, it can be seen in the 'Skaj' messages cited in the indictment," the portal writes.
Through Ed and Markus, the group tried to influence a powerful person they called Oskar, who they believed was the only one who could influence the judges who tried Šarć in the drug smuggling case.
The Serbian prosecutor's office, although it has all those "Sky" messages, has not yet determined who Edo, Markus and Oskar are, nor has it investigated the role of court president Milenkovic.
In public, only Dijana Hrkalović, the former second most powerful person in the Serbian police, claimed that Edo was precisely her former boss - Police Minister Nebojša Stefanović.
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