PODGORICA, 17.01.2018 – Yesterday, after four months, a cell phone was returned to Daily “Dan” journalist Vladimir Otašević. The phone was seized by the police on the order of the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office in Bijelo Polje, within the investigation on threats made to Otašević by the Prime Minister’s brother.
Otašević was invited yesterday, to give a witness statement, by the Deputy Chief Prosecutor Vukas Radonjić, who returned the phone. The investigation is conducted against Velizar Marković from Mojkovac, brother of the Prime Minister Duško Marković, who threatened Daily “Dan” journalist on September 11.
He swore and threatened during a telephone conversation with a journalist, who contacted him trying to connect with his brother Radoje Marković. The Prime Minister has previously said that all of this has a political context and that his family should be left alone.
The Council for Civilian Control of Police Operations accepted the complaint of the Association of Professional Journalists of Montenegro regarding the police conduct and it established that the police failed to comply with the order of the Prosecutor, who requested from Mojkovac security unit, on September 29, 2017, to take the recording from already sized phone in the presence of the journalist. They asked, according to the reply of the Police Directorate Director, Slavko Stojanović to the Council, from the police to notify the Prosecutor whether the journalist was invited, and if not why.
On September 14, Otašević’s cell phone and SIM card, were seized as they were sent to the expert analysis.
Otašević’s lawyer, Aleksandar Kovačević, confirmed to Vijesti that the journalist gave a statement to the Prosecutor.
Otašević asked the Prosecutor why he was not invited to be present while the recording was extracted from the phone, as ordered by his colleague from Bijelo Polje, but he did not receive an answer. Radonjić told him that he had just taken the case and did not know anything about it, said Kovačević.