Gorjanc Prelevic: Sovereignty of Montenegro threatened by organized criminal groups; Adžić: It's not like that

The executive director of Action for Human Rights (HRA), Tea Gorjanc Prelevic, said that the sovereignty of Montenegro is threatened by organized criminal groups.

"You can see who is in prison and under what charges," said Gorjanc Prelevic in tonight's show Reflektor on Television Vijesti.

She said that the idea is to open everything up, to see what the problem is, why the director of the Police Directorate, Zoran Brđanin, is not resigning.

"It seems to me that it is in accordance with international practice, if your closest associate cooperates with organized crime, you nominated him for that position, you bear objective responsibility. It always seemed to me that Brđanin is not some armchair man who will insist on the armchair but he still does it. First he refused to resign, and that will be clarified in the speech in the following days. I hope that Brđanin will clarify to the public why he will not resign and come out to explain it," said Gorjanc Prelevic.

The Minister of Internal Affairs, Filip Adžić, said that this is not the case because 130 or 140 of the biggest criminals are either outside Montenegro or in prisons in other countries or in prisons in Montenegro.

"Now they are talking about things that no one was allowed to talk about or take action against those people or activities. We are creating a situation where Montenegro was safe only because there was silence about things that we all knew were happening, and that "Now, because we started taking action against those people, Montenegro is more unsafe. It's not like that," said Adžić.

Adžić said that, without blaming Brđanin, that it is his responsibility what each officer in the Police Directorate does individually, he said that Brđanin's objective responsibility would be significantly less if he was the director of the library, the National Museum, and that he did not know if any of his officers were in at the top of the criminal organization.

"But considering that it is the director of the police, if you do not know or have no information that your closest collaborators are at the top of a criminal organization, then that fact alone discredits you from continuing to do your job," Adžić said.

Prime Minister Dritan Abazović said at a press conference earlier today that it is not excluded that the Government may dismiss Brđanin at the session on Thursday, and that it would be best if he resigned.

Brđanin told "Vijesti" on March 27 that the legal conditions for his dismissal were not met.

On March 23, the police administration told "Vijesti" that Brđanin was not heard in the investigation into the alleged criminal activities of several of his associates and subordinates, so there is no reason for him to resign.

This is how the Police Administration answered questions about the investigation by the Special State Prosecutor's Office in which Brđanin's first associate - assistant director for fighting crime Dejan Knežević - was also arrested.

The topics of tonight's Reflector were:

Have the latest arrests of police officers confirmed the suspicions of who manages the captured institutions in Montenegro?

How did police badges instead of public ones protect the interests of criminals, with whose approval, and did valuable assets and lifestyles indicate possible links to dirty money?

How to get a "clean" police force and is the executive power ready to conduct a vetting?

Will the police beating squad be responsible for the torture and abuse they carried out throughout Montenegro?