On 30 June, the Basic Court in Bijelo Polje issued a verdict establishing the responsibility of police officers for the ill-treatment of Ognjen Mijatović at the protest that was organised in Pljevlja on 13 May 2020 because of the arrest of the Bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Two police officers were sentenced to five months of house arrest: one (Igor Novović) for ill-treating Mijatović, and the other (Novović’s superior, Milan Jović) for providing aid to the perpetrator after the fact. The remaining four accused police officers (Viktor Bojović, Ranko Stevanović, Goran Manojlović and Slavko Krstonijević) were acquitted because the court could not determine with certainty that they, too, used force against Mijatović.
The Human Rights Action welcomes the verdict which established responsibility for ill-treatment by the police. We expect the High Court in Bijelo Polje to review the first-instance verdict regarding the five-month prison sentence, which enables the officer in question to continue to be employed by the police and use of force against citizens. We emphasise that during the trial, after the viewing of the video footage, it was undisputedly established that Mijatović was not offering any resistance. Yet, he still was beaten by police officers, which indicates that he was punished in an absolutely impermissible arbitrary fashion.
Due to the poorly conducted investigation by the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office in Pljevlja, led by prosecutor Sanja Golubović, it was not possible to determine all the circumstances of the case in the verdict.
Namely, acting upon the complaint submitted by Ognjen Mijatović’s mother, the Internal Control Sector of the Police collected the statements of 30 police officers and concluded, on 31 July 2020, that the case did involve excessive use of powers, and that the physical integrity and dignity of Mijatović were indeed grossly violated. However, it did not specify who was responsible for this. In the above mentioned report, the Internal Control established the identity of police officer Igor Novović, whose police-issue baton broke while he was beating Mijatović, as well as the identity of the Commander of the Police Station in the Security Centre in Pljevlja, Milan Jović, who was undoubtedly aware of the fact that on this particular occasion police officers exceeded their powers, but still failed to take the necessary measures and actions to identify all the police officers who – according to Ognjen Mijatović – used force unlawfully on that occasion.
The State Prosecutor’s Office questioned the first two suspects, who were identified by the Internal Control of the police, only on 24 December 2020 (in the capacity of suspects), more than six months after the incident, while the victim, Mijatović, was heard 8 months later (on 29 January 2021). Apart from the fact that, in this case, the initial reaction of the State Prosecutor’s Office was delayed, the prosecution also neglected to investigate the responsibility of all the police officers who were present in the video recording, or to conduct an adequate expert examination of Mijatović’s injuries (only the medical documentation was examined, but the psychological-physical traces of injuries on the victim were not), which was also a consequence of the prosecution’s late reaction, which is contrary to international standards.
Not even this outcome would have happened had there been no efforts of attorney Dalibor Tomović, who represented Mijatović in this case and requested that the key piece of evidence – the video recording of his brutal beating – not be excluded from evidence. The decision to exclude the video recording was made by the judge of the Basic Court in Bijelo Polje, Luka Radulović, at the request of the defence attorneys of the defendants, who insisted that the recording constituted an invalid piece of evidence, obtained outside the legal procedure. After the appeal of the prosecution, the High Court overturned this decision and allowed the use of the video recording in the proceedings.
The Human Rights Action was able to provide legal assistance to Ognjen Mijatović thanks to the financial support of the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture (UNVFVT).
