The High Court in Podgorica has awarded Braslav Borozan from Podgorica the amount of EUR 7,000, and Marko Rakočević from Kolašin the amount of EUR 7,500, in the name of final compensation for ineffective investigations of police torture in cases from 2015 in which these men were the injured parties.
Borozan reported that he had been beaten by police officers in the premises of Security Centre in Podgorica on 9 October 2015, supporting his claims with the findings of a forensic medical expert. Neither the perpetrators nor those who ordered the above ill-treatment were ever identified, while in the meantime the criminal prosecution fell under the statute of limitations. Vukas Radonjić was the competent prosecutor in the case.
Rakočević is one of three persons from Kolašin who had been beaten by members of the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit at the intersection of Marko Miljanov and Miljan Vukov streets in Podgorica, at approximately 10:30p.m. on 24 October 2015, following a protest by the political coalition Democratic Front. The attackers were not identified in this case either. At first, the competent state prosecutor was first Danka Ivanović Djerić. After she was promoted to the High State Prosecutor’s Office, the case was assigned to state prosecutors Sladjana Španjević Volkov and Vukas Radonjić. State prosecutor Haris Šabotić has been in charge of it since 2 November 2023.
In 2018, the Constitutional Court found that the ineffective investigation of the Basic Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica had violated Borozan’s right to dignity and personal inviolability (Article 28 of the Constitution of Montenegro and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights). The Basic Court in Podgorica awarded him EUR 5,000 in damages (case P no. 2884/22), but the High Court in Podgorica (case Gž. no. 3901/23) increased the amount to EUR 7,000 based on the fact that, due to the ineffective investigation, the police officers responsible for Borozan’s unlawful treatment have remained permanently unpunished, while he was promptly prosecuted and sanctioned, in both misdemeanor and criminal proceedings, for his own unlawful actions against said officers.
The court pointed out that this caused Borozan to justifiably feel “fear and a sense of insecurity” and “loss of trust in public authorities”, because “through inefficient actions of the public authorities, [the state] has put the police officers in a privileged position compared to the accuser as a citizen” despite the fact that it was “their constitutional and legal obligation to protect citizens’ rights and freedoms”.
The Basic Court in Podgorica awarded Rakočević EUR 8,000 (case P. no. 2610/22) for the violation of the same rights by an ineffective investigation, but the High Court in Podgorica (case Gž. no. 3979/23) reduced this amount to EUR 7,500, citing that the European Court of Human Rights had awarded the applicants such an amount for the same violation of rights in the case Baranin and Vukčević v. Montenegro. Baranin and Vukčević were ill-treated a few minutes prior to Rakočević, in Zlatarska Street through which the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit’s “punitive expedition” had passed a bit earlier. In their case too, no one has been identified or punished to date, and there is still no information on the progress of the investigation in either case.
Braslav Borozan and Marko Rakočević were represented by attorney Dalibor Tomović, as part of the Human Rights Action’s support programme for victims of torture financed by the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture.
