Charges were filed today against police officers Boris Andušić and Zoran Backović, for extorting a statement from Milo Jovanović in January 2021, while at the same time a decision was made to dismiss the criminal complaint against suspect Nikola Žižić. The HRA welcomes the progress in this case of police torture, once again supported by photographs from the SKY application. We expect the State Prosecutor’s Office to approach the remaining cases that contain serious allegations of police torture with the same degree of dedication, especially those from the period 2020-2021. It is necessary to also examine, in accordance with the recommendations of the CPT, the responsibility of the management in the police, i.e. the superior officer of the immediate perpetrators, who was obliged to prevent, that is, process any form of torture. On the other hand, it is also necessary to examine the responsibility of state prosecutors, who made investigations of police torture ineffective, making it possible for the perpetrators to avoid responsibility.

In 2021, Milo Jovanović reported that he was tortured on 22 January of that year by police officers who entered the apartment he was in, and conducted a search in order to force a confession from him about certain criminal acts. He stated that he did not offer any resistance, but was nevertheless immediately knocked to the floor, where several masked policemen (wearing face-covering caps) punched him on the back. His nose was injured on that occasion. After some time he was taken to another room, where the ill-treatment continued as the policemen trampled his legs and hands with their boots and hit him in the genitals and ribs. He was then transferred from Tivat to Podgorica, to the police premises in the City Mall (premises of the Sector for the Fight against Crime), where the ill-treatment continued.

A photograph of Jovanović that confirms the torture, showing a clear injury to his nose – which he talked about as early as 2021 – was found in the correspondence that was downloaded from the SKY application.

However, the absence of an effective investigation and the prosecution’s will to obtain the necessary evidence at the key moment have led to almost no progress in the case in more than three years. The HRA has already warned that the omissions of the initially responsible prosecutor Ivana Vuksanović in the investigation point to her deliberate helping police officers to avoid responsibility.

The Prosecutorial Council, too, established on 13 May 2023 that the complaint against the work of prosecutor Vuksanović was founded because she did not act in the case in a timely manner; after that, the case was assigned to prosecutor Nadja Martinović, which is when the investigation began to intensify. It was completed by state prosecutor Marko Ivanovic, who filed today’s charges.

We remind that in this case, in April 2024, the Constitutional Court, too, concluded that, due to the ineffective investigation of prosecutor Vuksanović (whose investigation was not carried out urgently, thoroughly or independently), Jovanović’s material and procedural aspects of the right to inviolability of physical and psychological integrity were violated, as was the prohibition of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The Constitutional Court confirmed the credibility of allegations of ill-treatment by police officers “beyond a reasonable doubt”. The conclusion was drawn based on “a set of indications, evidence and indisputable, sufficiently serious, clear and consistent assumptions such as physical injuries that were noted in the Emergency Medical Centre, and which the medical expert stated could have occurred while he [Jovanović] was deprived of liberty”.

We are glad that the intensification of the investigation has finally led to concrete developments in the form of filed charges. However, we once again call on the Supreme State Prosecutor to determine, both in this case and in others, the responsibility of all state prosecutors who, through their failure to act appropriately in police torture cases, contributed to the police officers’ avoidance of responsibility, and to announce what will be done to prevent this sort of practice in the future.