HRA welcomes the judgment of the Supreme Court of Montenegro in the case of Vladimir Beba Popović against Vanja Ćalović, by which it the Supreme Court finally rejected Popović’s claim that Ćalović violated his honor and reputation by stating that Popović posted online framed porn video with her character. The Supreme Court accepted Ćalović’s appeal, reversed the lower courts decisions and established that she had sufficient reasons to believe that Popović put the video on the internet, taking into account, among else, his testimony that he was indeed forwarding the video to a larger number of addresses with great personal satisfaction.
This time, the chamber of the Supreme Court, headed by judge Branimir Femić, decided to immaculately protect freedom of expression in accordance with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, unlike in some previous cases (Kusturica against Monitor and Nikolaidis, Ana Djukanović against Monitor; Čolović against Koprivica …).
Lower instance courts had previously ruled in favour of Popović, while the High Court in Podgorica decided that Ćalović at her own expense needed to publish the operative part of the judgment in all electronic and printed media in Montenegro and Republic of Serbia, which are more than 1,500. Popović insisted on the execution of this repressive judgement, and the bailiff ordered Ćalović to pay an advance for the publication of advertisements, which is the reason why her bank account was blocked. HRA regrets that the Supreme Court in its judgment did not specifically criticise the illegal decision of the High Court to order Ćalović to pay the publication of the judgment in all media in two different countries, although only a few actually published disputed claims. Thus, it is possible that in similar cases the High Court may repeat such an unsound judgment.
HRA previously appealed to the Constitutional Court to establish jurisdiction and urgently stay execution of the final judgment, bearing in mind that there is no deadline for the Supreme Court to decide on the revision case, that the Supreme court was hesitant to decide in February when this irregular remedy was filed, and that previously the court had passed judgments not in line with European standards of freedom of speech.
We congratulate Vanja and her lawyer Veselin Radulovic for successful accomplishment of this process, which will, at least we hope, establish a new standard of protection of the right to freedom of expression by the Supreme Court of Montenegro in accordance with the European standards.
