Six years after Marko Boljević reported that he had been ill-treated at the Podgorica police station, and despite medical findings confirming injuries consistent with his account of torture, the Basic Court in Podgorica has, for the second time, acquitted five police inspectors accused of using severe violence to coerce a statement from him.

The acquittal is particularly concerning because it was issued after the High Court in Podgorica overturned the previous judgment and ordered that all evidence be assessed individually, in relation to each other and against the defendants’ accounts. The reasoning of the new judgment shows that the court’s favourable approach towards the defendants has not substantially changed and that, once again, their contradictory accounts were not critically examined.

Such an approach to prosecuting police torture not only deepens impunity and discourages victims from reporting ill-treatment, but also calls into question the state’s ability to provide effective protection against torture and ensure the accountability of public officials. This is one of the key rule-of-law issues and one of the obligations that Montenegro must fulfil as part of its accession to the European Union.

We expect the High Court to overturn the acquittal once again and assess the evidence itself. We expect the evidence to be considered objectively and the defendants’ accounts, supported by statements from their colleagues, to be critically examined in accordance with European standards.

In the first judgment, Judge Larisa Mijušković Stamatović criticised Boljević for not reporting the torture that same evening, but “only the following day”, referring to an alleged violation of the “principle of timeliness” by the victim. No such principle exists in international practice concerning the prosecution of torture.

In the new judgment, judging by the court’s press release, this argument is no longer at the forefront. However, the court once again based its conclusion that police torture had not been proven on the same disputed assessments:

• The court described the forensic expert’s finding that the injuries could have been sustained during the victim’s detention in police custody or up to 72 hours earlier as an “insurmountable time gap” — even though the finding supports the account given by the victim, Boljević;
• The court found that the injuries could have been sustained in another incident, without any evidence that such an incident had actually occurred;
• The court considered that the injuries should have been visible to the prosecutor and the police officers present during the polygraph examination, although, according to the expert findings, they were not located on visible parts of the body, but behind the neck and under clothing. In addition, the court accepted the statements of police officers connected to the defendants, who claimed that they had not noticed anything;
• Differences between the statements of the victim and his father regarding who saw the injuries and when were used to challenge the credibility of the victim’s account — although these differences cannot call into question the medically established existence of the injuries, while inconsistencies in the defendants’ statements were disregarded.

The conclusion is that the court once again chose interpretations favourable to the defendants, even when the evidence — including the expert findings and medical records — pointed to the contrary, or when the witnesses whose statements it accepted had a conflict of interest, as they were colleagues of the accused police officers.

We recall that both the forensic medical expert and the Forensic Medical Examination Board of the University of Montenegro found that the injuries on Marko Boljević’s body were consistent with his account of the torture he had suffered. According to their findings, the injuries resulted from at least 11 blows inflicted with fists, feet, so-called volley kicks and a blunt instrument.

Three internationally recognised experts also examined Boljević and concluded in a separate expert report, with a “high degree of certainty”, that the documented injuries were consistent with his account of torture. The judge rejected this report because the expert examination had not been commissioned by a domestic court or prosecutor’s office, with instructions specifying the matters to be examined.