Untitled

Humanitarian Law CenterThe Republic Public Prosecutor suggested in the submission Ktž. number2050/05 from 20 October 2005 that the defendant and his Counsellors’ appealsbe overruled and the first instance verdict upheld.The Supreme Court held the Trial Panel session pursuant to Article 375 ofthe Criminal Procedure Code in the presence of defendant Saša Cvjetanand his Counsellors Attorneys ore Kalanj, Ilija Radulović, and GoranRodić, and in the absence of the regularly summoned Deputy RepublicPublic Prosecutor and Defence Attorney ore Mamula, who was not regularlysummoned, in which the Trial Panel re-examined the first instanceverdict and other documents from the case file, after which it found thefollowing:The appealed verdict does not contain serious violations of the criminalprocedure or violations of the Criminal Code, to which the second instancecourts always pay attention ex officio pursuant to Article 380 Para 1 Item 1and 2 of the Criminal Procedure Code. It also does not contain serious violationsof the criminal procedure provisions pointed out in the appeals.First of all, the appeals are challenging the first instance verdict because ofthe serious violations of the criminal procedure provisions prescribed underArticle 368 Para 1 Item 10 of the Criminal Procedure Code and in thisrelation they claim that the verdict is based on the evidence on which, accordingto the Criminal Procedure Code provisions, it could not be based,and this is the record from the interrogation of the defendant conductedby the Investigative Judge on 24 May 1999, because defendant CvjetanSaša was not previously warned that he was not obliged to defend himselfor answer the questions and neither was he warned that all he gives as astatement can and will be used against him as evidence pursuant to Article13 Para 3 of the Criminal Procedure Code; the Defence Attorney did not attendthe interrogation even though it was noted on the record that AttorneyDragutin Stanković was there and this represents a counterfeited document.Besides the aforementioned, this record from the interrogation heldbefore the Investigative Judge could not be used as evidence in the criminalproceedings because Saša Cvjetan’s defence was extorted with the violenceand threats used by Inspectors Oparnica Miloš and Duško Klikovacduring the interrogation. This was pointed out to the Investigative Judge340