Minister of Culture Nikola Selakovic he arrived with his lawyers at the Special Court where the trial continues in the case of "General Staff".
Citizens who gathered at the invitation of the students escorted them to the courthouse with whistles.
Until now, only Minister Selaković presented his defense, and today the other suspects should also plead to the indictment - Secretary of the Ministry of Culture Slavica Jelača, Acting Director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments Goran Vasić and Acting Director of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Belgrade Aleksandar Ivanović.
They denied guilt.
Selaković, who presented his defense at the previous hearing, claimed that the procedure was "politically motivated" and that it had "three goals" - bringing down and discrediting state officials, creating internal institutional instability and enabling political changes outside of the legally established procedure.
He said that in the proceedings against him and his associates, "TOK's collusion with carefully selected media houses has been laid bare," claiming that until the indictment against him was filed, "1.583 negative texts were published in the opposition media," while the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime "supplied data from the investigation to "selected members" of the parliamentary and non-parliamentary opposition.
Selaković also said that prosecutor's associate Rade Bajić, who interrogated associates in that proceeding, spoke at protests and participated in demonstrations.
The prosecutor's office initiated the procedure "on the basis of an anonymous complaint" received by e-mail, Selaković said, with claims that Dubravka Đukanović, the former director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, and her deputy Estela Radonjić Živkov were behind the complaint.
Slavica Jelača, Selaković's associate and defendant in the same proceedings, requested to present her defense at the next hearing so that she would not be interrupted, as the trial was planned to last only until 14 p.m. due to the occupancy of the courtroom, which was granted.
TOK filed an indictment against Minister Nikola Selaković and three others in the General Staff case.
The suspects, as they add, are accused of having committed two criminal acts of abuse of official position from Art. 359 paragraph 1 and falsification of an official document from Art. 357 paragraph 2 in connection with paragraph 1 CC.
Source: H1
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