TRAVEL REPORT The Hon. Michael Atkinson MP Attorney-General ...

Thursday, 19 August, 2004Zeljko SturanovicMontenegrin Justice MinisterVesna KaradzicaInterpreterBiographyBorn on 31 January 1960 in Niksic ; graduated from the Faculty of Law inPodgorica in 1983, as an outstanding student of his generation .He was employed in Niksic Steel Factory as a Senior Officer and the Head ofLegal Department .Since 1993 he was representative in the House of Citizens of the FederalParliament in two terms of office . During his second term of office he had thefunction of the Head of the DPS Caucus from Montenegro . He was elected asrepresentative in the Parliament of the Republic of Montenegro from the DPSelectoral list, on the occasion of elections in 2001 . Since 2nd Jusly 2001 hehas been performing the function of the Minister of Justice in the Governmentof Montenegro .He is the President of the Commission for Human Resources in theGovernment of Montenegro .He is the member of the Presidency of DPS of Montenegro .He lives in Niksic and is married with two children .Meeting SummaryThe delegation met with the Justice Minister, Mr Zeljko Sturanovic to discusscrime and sentencing policy . The Justice Minister outlined some of thereforms in the criminal-justice systems .During the previous year and the first half of this year, Montenegro hascompletely reformed the criminal-justice system and decided to do this forseveral reasons . The Constitutional charter that regulated State union allowedboth member States power to do so . Before they adopted the whole ofcriminal justice procedure within the Federal jurisdiction, but the criminal codewas under divided jurisdiction . They have adopted the new criminal code andprocedure law in six months . It is the first time since 1906 that Montenegrinsgot their own criminal code . They did not simply copy the Federal Code, theychanged their code to adopt to current needs .The code has 520 articles . A whole set of new crimes have been included, theresult of the transition process . Provisions for these crimes are very similar tointernational standards, for example in, money laundering, in humantrafficking and computer crimes . Other crimes that were part of the legislationwere deleted as obsolete . A special chapter has also been adopted forcrimes against international humanitarian law, in harmonising withTravel Report, Hon. Michael Atkinson, MP . and Ms. Vini Ciccarello M.P., August, 2004 108