The President of the High Court in Podgorica, Zoran Radović, rejects the accusations of a part of the opposition and the public that someone influenced him to pass an acquittal for the "coup d'état".
On July 12, Andrija Mandić, Milan Knežević and the others were acquitted of charges in the case known as "coup d'état", that is, attempted terrorism on the day of the 2016 parliamentary elections.
Two months after being elected, Radović in his first interview with the media - for Televizija Vijesti points out that the situation in the Special Department of the High Court is alarming, because they have 155 pending cases, and it is expected that by the end of the year they will receive a larger number of indictments, of which and complex for war crimes.
He also said that they were disappointed because only two of the 29 proposals for amending the Code of Criminal Procedure (CPC) reached the Assembly.
"Remember this man well - he betrayed state interests". With these words, the spokesman of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), Miloš Nikolić, targeted Radović after he acquitted the defendants in the "coup d'état" case in the repeated proceedings.
Similar reactions followed, and Radović says that he is used to such accusations.
He responds to the allegations that someone influenced him when passing the verdict...
"Of course, there was no influence on me when the verdict was passed. We have witnessed for many years that the actors of political life lightly make some statements, and it is easy to conclude that they are for internal political use," Radović told TV Vijesti.
He notes that the law stipulates that public figures, media and organizations must not violate the presumption of innocence with their statements, but neither must they endanger judicial independence.
"All these statements are contrary to this Article 3. In my opinion, some misdemeanor provisions should be provided for some gross violations of this principle," said Radović.
Radović is one of the seven judges of the Special Division, which at the end of June had 155 pending cases.
The progress is that they resolved 27 cases in six months this year, and 13 in the same period last year.
They had, he says, high expectations for changes to the CPC, as part of the IBAR reform.
"What happened to those changes? There was only one big disappointment of the judges, out of some 29 proposals for changes to the CPC that were aimed at speeding up the procedure, changes that would prevent procedural abuses, only two provisions went to the Assembly. political points prevailed, to obtain the final benchmarks for IBAR," said Radović.
With the amendments to the CPC, the evidence obtained from the Residual Mechanism in The Hague, the successor of the Hague Tribunal, will be able to be used before the High Court.
Radović says that it is to be expected that he will soon receive a large number of indictments for war crimes.
"We have already received one. This will further complicate the situation in the Special Department, because it is evidence from the beginning of the nineties, with a huge amount of evidence, where the participants of those events are not alive, where the evidence will be presented via video link, the surviving witnesses will will be heard through the court in Bosnia and Herzegovina, so we are facing a very difficult period and it is safe to say that the situation is alarming," he said.
And, the alarming situation implies the introduction of measures to prevent an increase in the number of pending cases.
"We are looking forward to the fact that the Special Prosecutor's Office is getting better conditions, which will move to the old Government building, but those cases that are under the jurisdiction of the Special Department of the High Court will not be completed by the Special Prosecutor's Office, but will be handled by the High Court, and in the conditions in which we work, with such with the number of cases, it is almost impossible," said Radović.
One of the ways to increase efficiency is the abolition of hearings for the control of indictments, but sometimes long court proceedings are inevitable where there are up to 30 defendants each.
The Criminal Division agrees with the proposal that detention for the most serious crimes, which now lasts a maximum of three years from the filing of the indictment to the first-instance verdict, should be increased.
"We have a unanimous opinion that it should be increased to five years," said Radović.
Radović hopes that they will be granted an increase in the number of judges, but also that the state will stand by them, because even with all their efforts, they cannot achieve much if they still have to fight for a free courtroom.
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