Six years after the torture of Jovan Grujičić at the Podgorica Security Center, the Higher State Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica has definitively upheld the decision dismissing the criminal complaint against ten police officers who, according to police documentation, participated in organizing Grujičić’s transfer from the Special Psychiatric Hospital in Dobrota and in his questioning at the Podgorica Security Center.

Human Rights Action expects the State Prosecutor’s Office to answer the key question: Who inflicted the injuries on Grujičić inside the police building in Podgorica, if not the reported police officers who were responsible for him?!

Both the court and medical expert assessments confirmed Grujičić’s allegations of abuse, but even after six years neither the direct perpetrators nor command responsibility have been established. It also remains unclear who from the police pressured the former director of the Special Psychiatric Hospital in Dobrota, Petar Abramović, to give false testimony. It also remains unclear who is responsible for the disappearance of documentation from the Medical Chamber concerning violations of Jovan Grujičić’s rights, since this prevented the Chamber from sanctioning the unethical conduct of doctors from the Dobrota Special Psychiatric Hospital, who denied Grujičić therapy before he was taken to the police so that a statement could be extracted from him through abuse.

Although it all sounds like a thriller, it is merely another real operation of cover-up and impunity for police torture, which occurred shortly before the “democratic changes” of 2020 but has remained unpunished six years later.

In May 2020, the police and the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office groundlessly accused Grujičić of a “bomb attack” on the “Grand” bar and the house of security-services official Duško Golubović, because they were unable, or unwilling, to uncover the real perpetrators. The court finally acquitted Grujičić of all suspicion of planting explosives, pointing out that he had been a victim of police torture. In the meantime, Golubović has been placed in pre-trial detention on charges of creating a criminal organization and cigarette smuggling.

Grujičić was not the only person abused in that police operation. Benjamin Mugoša, although initially suspected of the same offense as Grujičić, was not even indicted, because it was proven that he was in prison at the time the explosives were planted. Like Grujičić, he too was subjected to torture in order to extract a statement, as evidenced by medical findings. Marko Boljević was also a victim of police torture, in order to force him to falsely testify against Grujičić and Mugoša.

Now, Higher State Prosecutor Tatjana Begović has upheld the sixth consecutive decision dismissing the criminal complaint concerning the torture of Grujičić in May 2020. The previous decisions had been overturned as premature and based on an incompletely established factual situation. To this day, no one has been prosecuted for the torture of Mugoša and Boljević either.

The complaint was dismissed despite medical findings and opinions by domestic and international experts — Prof. Dr. Dragana Čukić, Prof. Dr. Đorđe Alempijević, Dr. Pierre Duterte and Dr. Onder Özkalipci — who confirmed the abuse with a high degree of certainty.

There has been no comprehensive institutional reconstruction of the events, nor any determination of the responsibility of all state officials for violations of Grujičić’s human rights. The case remains an example of organized institutional human-rights violations along the line of the Police Directorate–Special Psychiatric Hospital in Dobrota–Basic State Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica.

In any case, this represents a failure of the State Prosecutor’s Office to effectively investigate a well-founded complaint of police abuse in accordance with international standards, while the closing benchmark in Chapter 23 of Montenegro’s negotiations with the European Union specifically requires a swift and effective judicial response in cases of ill-treatment.

The list of suspects in the criminal complaint for the torture of Grujičić included Miloš Vučinić, former head of the Criminal Police Security Department at the Podgorica Security Center and current head of the “South” Regional Center; Srđan Korać, head of the Criminal Police Station for Suppression of Blood Offenses and Domestic Violence; as well as inspectors Vukašin Leković, Dalibor Ljekočević, Bojan Vujačić, Nemanja Vujošević, Radoman Vujičić, Miodrag Jovović, Ivan Peruničić and Ljubisav Striković. In relation to all of them, there is written documentation concerning the organization of Grujičić’s transfer from the Special Psychiatric Hospital in Dobrota for questioning at the Podgorica Security Center and their participation in his questioning.