Pre-trial detention is not punishment, people are not sent to prison without a trial — these are the human rights to liberty and to the presumption of innocence that each of us holds, rights which Member of Parliament Boris Bogdanović either does not know about or believes should be abolished, effectively writing Montenegro out of the UN, the Council of Europe, and its candidacy for EU membership.

Imagine someone reported you for a criminal offence you did not commit. Before the evidence is examined, before a trial at which you could mount a defence, before a verdict — would you want to spend months and years in prison simply because some politician believes it would send a “strong message” to the public?!

That is precisely what MP Bogdanović, regrettably, expects of Montenegrin judges: to pass sentences without trials and to send people straight to prison. And anyone who opposes this — such as the Judicial Council — he brands as “primitive political lawyers of the mafia.” This is simply not democratic, and it has nothing to do with democracy, no matter how “wisely” all the Democrats from Democratic Montenegro remain silent in the face of such reckless statements.

Pre-trial detention is not and must not be punishment before a verdict. Everyone is innocent until proven otherwise before a court. This is enshrined in the Constitution and laws of Montenegro, in the European Convention on Human Rights, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The same must apply to those suspected of having helped Miloš Medenica flee. The same must apply to Boris Bogdanović himself should he ever be suspected of a criminal offence.

A person in pre-trial detention has not been convicted. They are held there only exceptionally, when court proceedings cannot otherwise be conducted. A judge who does not find that the legal conditions for detention have been met is doing nothing “scandalous” and is not “rendering the fight against crime meaningless,” as Bogdanović claims — rather, they are protecting all of us from abuse of state power.

In the specific case at hand, the judge of the Basic Court in Podgorica, who released the suspects in the escape-assistance case to defend themselves at liberty, determined that the exceptional and necessary grounds justifying pre-trial detention had not been established. It was stated that the court concluded that the public prosecutor’s request for detention did not demonstrate a risk of flight, nor a risk of witness tampering. Whether these individuals are actually responsible for the criminal offence or not is yet to be determined by the court — and until then, in a democratic society such as Montenegro, they must not be sent to serve punishment.

In other words, people are not sent straight to prison; rather, THE COURT, ON THE BASIS OF A TRIAL, first establishes their guilt — and not the public prosecutor, not the chief of police, not Bogdanović, nor any other politician. The right we all possess is called the presumption of innocence, and it is embedded in the very foundations of modern civilisation.

And lest I forget: no, I do not support the mafia — I simply know that the only proper response to organised crime can come from incorruptible and effective public prosecutors and police officers, not from politicians who exert undue pressure on the judiciary.

MP Bogdanović’s statement is yet another dispiriting demonstration of the refusal by part of the ruling elite to accept the rule of law. At a stage of EU accession negotiations in which commitment to European values must be demonstrated, messages of this kind are not only contrary to the legal order — they are politically damaging to Montenegro’s European future.

Tea Gorjanc Prelević, Executive Director, NGO Human Rights Action