PODGORICA, 27.04. 2018. – The head of the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica, Lidija Klikovac, couldn’t explain how two official records of different content and the same registration number appeared, in an investigation of the unsolved attack on journalist Mladen Stojovic on May 23, 2008.
“I can’t tell you about this record, because I don’t have that information here today. That is a question for the acting prosecutor”, Klikovac said on the panel after the screening of the documentary movie “Using Power On The Seventh One”, produced in the cooperation of NGO “35mm” and TV “Vijesti”.
By that, she responded to the question of the president of the Commission for Investigating the Attacks on Journalists and Media Property, Nikola Markovic, who explained that there is a paragraph in one record in which the businessmen Branislav Micunovic and Radojica Bozovic were listed as suspected masterminds, while the second record, with the same official number, doesn’t have a paragraph with their names. Stojovic was attacked in 2008, after publicly expressed views on setting up football matches in the Montenegrin league.
Information on double official notes was published in the latest Report of the Commission, which was adopted by the Government. The case of the attack on Stojovic will be outdated in a month.
On the other hand, as the basic state prosecutor in Bar, Milenko Magdelinic, told to the newspaper “Vijesti”, Micunovic and Bozovic were heard in the Police on May 23, 2008, and they told the Police they had nothing to do with that case. The prosecutor denied that there were two official notes archived on the same day, under the same number, but of different content – as the Commission found.
Klikovac didn’t fully answered Markovic’s question why prosecutors acted differently in two almost identical cases of threats to journalists.
“The prosecutor rejected denial of journalist of newspaper Dan, regarding the threats made by the brother of the Prime Minister, Dusko Markovic, which were heard by the whole Montenegro, while the ordinary criminal who recently threatened to journalist of daily Vijesti was immediately arrested after her report to the Police. The only difference between these two cases is that in the first case the Prime Minister’s brother threatened the journalist and you didn’t have the institutional courage to arrest him”, Markovic said.
Klikovac responded that the Basic and High State Prosecutors considered that there were no elements for prosecution in the report of the journalist of “Dan”, but that the proceedings could be continued on a private lawsuit.
Markovic said that the prosecution and the police have resolved all cases of assaults on journalists who don’t have a political background, while “they haven’t moved away” in cases with political connotations.
The Klikovac said that a significant number of cases were resolved, but that there were still a number of cases in which the perpetrators of the attack on the journalists were unknown.
She added that attacks on journalists aren’t the exclusivity of Montenegro, but that the attacks are happening all over the world and addressed the examples of Malta and Slovakia, where two journalists were killed.
Markovic said that the difference between Montenegro and these countries is precisely in the way on which the competent authorities are acting – the police, the prosecution and the Government.
“In Slovakia, after the murder of journalists and mass protests that followed, the Prime Minister resigned, while 17 people were arrested in Malta,” he said.
Director of television and newspaper “Vijesti” Zeljko Ivanovic, who was beaten in 2000 and for what two volunteers were convicted, told that the Prosecutor relativize the seriousness of the attacks on journalists.
“I expected that the Supreme State Prosecutor will appear here and apologize to the journalists for the previous work of the Prosecutor’s Office, but instead we heard her (Klikovac) relativizing everything that happened and only more humiliated the victims,” Ivanovic said.
The Klikovac said that she didn’t come here with the task of apologizing but to show how much the prosecution did. She also said she understood Ivanovic’s reaction as too emotional.
“The Klikovac noticed that I have a surplus of emotions, and I notices that she have lack of emotions. Now I see that the work of the prosecution isn’t a political will, but a lack of emotion,” concluded Ivanovic.