"This cover-up allowed two of the four suspects in her exploitation, Zoran Piperović and Ekrem Jasavić, to prosecute her for giving false testimony a decade later, in her absence. In that staged trial, S. Č. was unjustly sentenced to a year in prison and Montenegro issued an international arrest warrant against her. Last week, it was announced that the warrant had been lifted, because the criminal prosecution had become statute-barred in 2018. The epilogue of the case is not justice for the victim, nor redemption for the Montenegrin judiciary, but only a reminder that Montenegro was incapable of prosecuting and punishing a far-reaching case of human trafficking," said Raičević, Gorjanc Prelević and Saveljić.
As they stated, none of those who captured, sold, beat, raped, abused, and forced S. Č. into prostitution were held accountable, not the state prosecutors who had to prosecute her, not the judges who subsequently convicted her biasedly, not the Judicial Council and the Supreme Court, who refused to react to that bias.
"Montenegro remained indebted to her, and her case remained a reflection of the politically controlled institutions of that time. However, the honorable exceptions are primarily judge Ana Vuković, who made an effort to protect the victim in accordance with international standards during the investigation, as well as judge Nada Rabrenović, who twice acquitted S. Č. in the criminal proceedings against S. Č. S. Č. is a Moldovan citizen who, in October 2002, managed to escape from the people who exploited her and took away her personal documents in Podgorica, and to report to the police the case of human trafficking of which she was a victim. During the investigation phase, she described in detail the places, circumstances and persons involved in the human trafficking chain, and made allegations about the involvement of high-ranking state officials. Despite the arrests that followed in November 2002, and a six-month investigation, in which investigating judge Ana Vuković concluded that there were grounds for charges, the state prosecutor's office did not charge anyone. According to Vuković, the victim gave a credible statement, which enabled the identification of the perpetrators and the place of exploitation. However, the case showed the complete unwillingness of the State Prosecutor's Office to confront her allegations, while she was continuously exposed to death threats against herself and her children. After she finished giving her statement, and given her difficult psycho-physical condition as a result of the abuse, she was allowed to leave Montenegro and go to a third country with the help of the UN and IOM. However, this case, at the proposal of Vesna Medenica, the then new Supreme State Prosecutor, led to the dismissal of the State Prosecutor who was responsible for the case, Zoran Radonjić, due to incompetence, as well as the Deputy Supreme State Prosecutor, Zoran Piperović, who was suspected of intermediation in prostitution, due to unworthiness," Raičević, Gorjanc Prelević and Saveljić stated in a media release.
As they said, a decade later, two suspects in criminal acts related to S. Č's exploitation, Zoran Piperović and Ekrem Jasavić, filed criminal charges against her for giving false testimony.
"Since the report was dismissed by the state prosecutor from the Basic State Prosecutor's Office, the two of them, as private prosecutors, conducted criminal proceedings against S. Č., in her absence. In the first trial of S. Č., conducted by the judge of the Basic Court in Podgorica, Nada Rabrenović, the defendant was acquitted twice, because the judge did not establish the existence of intent to commit a criminal offense. And then the case was assigned to judge Goran Đuković. The second trial in S. Č.'s absence did not meet even the most elementary standards of fairness. Judge Đuković acted openly biased and did not ensure equal treatment for the defendant in the proceedings, did not present a single piece of evidence that could be in her favor, did not react to the completely passive behavior of her ex officio defense attorney, uncritically accepted material evidence that is notorious in cases of masking human trafficking, uncritically accepted all statements by the prosecutors, even those insulting and disparaging about her colleague, judge Ana Vuković, who conducted the investigation, lawyer S. Č., who represented her during the investigation in 2002-2003, and the director of the SŽK, Ljiljana Raičević, in whose shelter S. Č. stayed, and whom he did not even question," said Raičević, Gorjanc Prelević and Saveljić.
As they underlined, Judge Đuković also made humorous observations that it was "illogical" for any Montenegrin statesman to live a dissolute life or for the Deputy Supreme State Prosecutor to commit criminal acts such as facilitating prostitution.
"This is eloquently evidenced by his sentences from the verdict: "It is illogical that (Piperović), who held the public office of Deputy Supreme State Prosecutor, could have committed such a serious crime to the detriment of the then injured party, especially since for that position, in addition to professional references, he had to have a high reputation both in his professional and personal life..." (verdict K. no. 199/14, p. 40). Today, when several state prosecutors have already been convicted or are in the dock, it sounds incredible that in 2014 the court's conclusion that all state prosecutors are moral by nature and that it is not logical that they can commit serious crimes was normalized in Montenegro! However, this is not the end, the verdict by which S. Č. was convicted also contained evidence of bias in relation to "statesmen of Montenegro", specifically the then Prime Minister Milo Đukanović, whom S. Č. mentioned in her testimony in the context of the wild parties in the villa on Sveti Stefan, which she attended. Thus, the verdict also contains this judicial conclusion: “(The defendant’s statement) shows … above all illogical, and especially that any statesman of Montenegro lives such a lifestyle as the then injured party unfoundedly wants to present…” (judgment K. no. 199/14, p. 41). Such conclusions are obviously not any legal argumentation – but evidence of the judge’s humility towards state officials, at the expense of the victim. Admittedly, Đuković only sentenced S. Č. to a suspended sentence, while three judges of the Higher Court in Podgorica – Miljana Pavlićević, Hasnija Simonović and Evica Durutović, all now retired – commuted that sentence to one year in prison. They supported the actions of their colleague Đuković in everything else, not even reacting to the fact that S. Č.’s defense counsel ex officio, Boško Laličić, did absolutely nothing in her favor: he did not propose a single piece of evidence, he did not question a single piece of evidence for the prosecution, while in his closing statement he only "left it to the court to assess the legal decision". He did not even file an appeal against the first-instance verdict. The judges themselves concluded that he proposed the dismissal of the prosecutors' appeal - which means that the defense attorney did not even request that, although he probably charged the costs of his inaction in that proceeding", the statement emphasized.
As Raičević, Gorjanc Prelević and Saveljić said, in December 2014, the Safe Women's House (SŽK), the Human Rights Action (HRA) and the Women's Rights Center (CŽP) filed complaints with the Judicial Council, the Commission for the Code of Ethics of Judges, the presidents of the Basic and High Courts in Podgorica and the Bar Association about the conduct of judges and lawyers in this case. They all declared themselves incompetent, they added.
"The Judicial Council, then chaired by Prof. Dr. Mladen Vukčević, declared itself incompetent – finding that this body should not consider complaints about the work of judges, even though this was directly contrary to the Constitution and laws of Montenegro, which prescribe the Council's obligation to consider complaints about the work of judges, which this body still does today. The President of the Commission for the Code of Ethics of Judges, Dobrica Šljivančanin – whose commission had only three members, one of whom was Hasnija Simonović, one of the judges to whom the complaint referred – ignored the complaint. The President of the Basic Court, Zoran Radović, did not respond to either the complaint or the urgent requests. The Disciplinary Prosecutor of the Bar Association Živko Savović and the President of the Bar Association Zdravko Begović acted equally ignorantly in relation to the complaint against lawyer Laličić. Subsequently, the Deputy Disciplinary Prosecutor of the Bar Association, Nenad Medojević, declared himself incompetent, saying that they were not competent "to evaluate the appropriateness of taking or not taking action in numerous cases in which lawyers act on a daily basis before the courts". What happened to S. Č. is not just an individual injustice. The impunity of what happened to her has certainly deterred many from reporting anything similar to the Montenegrin authorities. And punishing her, as a victim, was an additional warning to everyone. The action was taken against the principle of non-punishment of victims of human trafficking, which has been repeatedly pointed out to Montenegro by GRETA - the Council of Europe's Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. This principle requires that victims, even when they commit criminal acts (which was not the case here), may not be prosecuted if they committed them as a direct consequence of the exploitation they were subjected to", the statement stressed.
As stated, Montenegro did not apply this principle in the case of S. Č.
"It was not applied by the court, nor by other institutions that had a duty to sanction such conduct. Evelin Probst, coordinator of the Austrian center for the protection of victims of human trafficking LEFÖ-Ibf, the organization where S. Č. stayed after leaving Montenegro, stated that the organization was shocked by the conviction against her, emphasizing that it was obvious that S. Č. was a victim of great trauma and that she deserved nothing but respect for her courage to report the crimes to the police. It is also known that her testimony contributed to the Serbian police arresting Milivoj Zarubica, the organizer of a network for human trafficking and the exploitation of women for the purpose of prostitution, in 2003. The statute of limitations on criminal prosecution is no satisfaction. Satisfaction would be the rule of law – if the perpetrators had been convicted, if the victim had been officially recognized as such, and if the institutions that failed to protect her had at least confronted that failure. None of that happened. The cancellation of the arrest warrant does not change that assessment. When "The most famous and bravest victim of human trafficking in Montenegro, the region and beyond remained unprotected and persecuted, it is no wonder that she remained the only one who is remembered," said Raičević, Gorjanc Prelević and Saveljić.
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