Are Vučić's pardons an act of mercy or an act of arbitrariness? Lawyers believe that it is an abuse of official position
The High Court in Belgrade and the High Court in Novi Sad announced on Monday, October 2, the names of a part of the person who is the former president of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić pardoned.
Before submitting his resignation as President of Serbia, Vučić said that pardoned 49 people, and for now the names of 23 of them are known. Among those pardoned are a group of activists from Novi Sad, the former state secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Diana Hrkalović, as well as Marko Pavlović, who hit a student of the Faculty of Law with his car at the intersection near the Faculty of Law at the beginning of 2025 Sonja Ponjavic.
Vučić himself said that he pardoned a group of activists from Novi Sad, which has now been confirmed by the announcement of the High Court in Novi Sad.
His pardoning of Hrkalović and Pavlović caused a public uproar.
Lawyer Bishop Ilić iz Belgrade Center for Human Rights he warned on social network X that pardoning is not a legally unlimited power of the president and that its abuse can constitute a criminal offense.
Lawyer Viktor Gostiljac assessed for Insider that this is a "crime against the legal system".
"That crime has its own name and it's called abuse of official position. Here we first need to clarify an issue that is taken a little for granted in our country, which is that the president has the right to pardon someone. The president does not have the right to choose the persons to whom he will apply these two institutes, either pardon or abolition, but he has the right to sign or not sign the submitted and explained proposal of the Ministry of Justice. It is only a role," Gostiljac explained.
One of the key questions regarding Vučić's "act of mercy" is whether it was enacted in accordance with the procedure prescribed by law.
Former President of the Supreme Court of Serbia Vida Petrović Skero she told TV Nova that Ministry of Justice only authorized to initiate the pardon procedure, but that it announced that it did not participate in the procedure.
"In that case, the procedure is not legal and the act cannot produce an effect," said Škero Petrović, adding that the Constitutional Court could react and determine that it is an illegal act.
Gostiljac points out that the public still does not know whether there was a proposal from the Ministry of Justice and what are the arguments on which it possibly based its proposal to exempt those persons from criminal proceedings.
The legal adviser of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, Vladica Ilić, recalls that last year Vučić spoke very explicitly about the motives for granting pardons, assessing that those motives were the opposite. Constitution.
"That deserved the reaction of the prosecutor's office, to investigate whether he committed the criminal offense of abuse of official position by taking advantage of his official position," Ilić told N1, adding that in that case he should react Public Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime (JTOK).
He believes that, if it is established that there has been abuse, criminal legal responsibility should be borne by Vučić and the Minister of Justice in a technical mandate. Nenad Vujić and points out that Vučić has on several occasions granted more than 50 pardons, among which, as he says, mostly persons prosecuted for criminal acts with elements of violence.
"For such crimes, pardons are also prohibited according to the international principle of human rights," Ilić said.
The essence of Vučić's pardons for him is that the president presented himself as the highest authority in Serbia, although, as he points out, this is not in accordance with the constitutional order.
"A pardon cannot serve to show the president that he is the highest authority in the Republic of Serbia, because he is not. According to the Constitution, he cannot control court decisions and put himself in a position to be above the judiciary," Ilić concludes.
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