Regarding the photographs depicting ill-treatment of victims of police torture, which were exchanged in encrypted communication among members of the Department for Special Operational Support of the Police Administration and members of the Kavač criminal clan, and were published yesterday by the portal Libertas, we demand an immediate reaction from the Special State Prosecutor’s Office (SSPO) in order to prevent the perpetrators from fleeing. We appeal to the SSPO to view these cases of systematic police torture as criminal acts that were committed by an organised criminal group. Any state prosecutor who has been compromised by ineffective handling of the cases reported so far must be excluded from SSPO’s further action. We emphasise that some of the crimes shown in the above photographs were long reported to the state prosecutor’s office, which has not prosecuted them to this day for unknown reasons.

The Human Rights Action is aware that 20 people have reported extortion of testimony in the past three years; 11 of them were members of the Sector for Combating Organised Crime[1], while 9 were criminal inspectors of the Security Centre in Podgorica.[2]

In April last year, the HRA informed the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the Committee against Torture, the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office and the Government about 15 well-founded reports of extortion of testimony. Meanwhile, we learned about five additional reports. None of them have been adequately processed to date.

EUROPOL submitted data from the SKY application to SPPO back in July 2021, i.e. one year and eight months ago, so the question is why more has not been done regarding the prosecution for torture documented in the photographs we are currently all looking at.

Members of the Sector for Combating Organised Crime, or more precisely the Department for Special Operational Support of the Police Administration, were under the command of Mirko Banović, former deputy commander of the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit (SAJ), infamous for torturing numerous citizens in Podgorica in 2015. Those best known to the public are Mijo Martinović, Branimir Vukčević and Momčilo Baranin (Zlatarska Street), as well as “Kolašinci” [persons from the town of Kolašin]. Milorad Mitrović, a former member of the SAJ, was also among the members of the department.

Obviously, continued impunity for torture only encourages its repetition. There is a serious question about the capacity of the State Prosecutor’s Office of Montenegro to deal with it and ensure the rule of law.

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[1] Stefan Kovač, Srđan Vušurović, Nikola Drecun, Goran Brajović, Mile Jovanović, Jovan Mrvaljević, Uroš Vučinić, Miloš Marković, Marko Šuković, Jovan Milković, Marinko Rajković.

[2] Jovan Grujičić, Marko Boljević, Benjamin Mugoša, Stefan Marković, Stefan Popović, Aleksandar Dacić, Ćazim Turusković, Emro Drini, Izet Beriša.