Attorney Rodoljub Sabic he assessed that it is completely unacceptable and extremely disturbing that even after two weeks from the death of DD u the police station the authorities did not provide the public with reliable information about the circumstances of that death.
In a written statement, Šabić assessed that the authorities are thereby further compromising an already repeatedly compromised procedure and jeopardizing its course and outcome.
"The sudden death of a relatively young man, only 40 years old, did not seem logical from the beginning and caused suspicions, which in the meantime were supported by the media and informed the public about the existence of the findings of experts from the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Belgrade, according to which the death was the result of torture, i.e. severe beating ", stated Sabic.
DD was suspected of helping his own brother hide the body of a two-year-old girl from Bor, for whom the whole of Serbia had been searching for ten days.
The weekly "Radar", referring to the findings of the autopsy, reported that DD died as a result of a beating, contrary to the previous claim of the MUP that he died of natural causes.
Stating that the news about torture is not surprising, Šabić reminded that recently the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) published a report on last year's ad hoc visit to Serbia in which, among other things, slapping, kicking, beating with sticks, putting plastic bags on the head, even electric shocks.
Šabić reminded that the Serbian code for officials who abuse and torture people in order to force a statement foresees up to ten years in prison, even without a fatal outcome.
"Suddenly he fell ill"
According to him, the important recommendations of the CPT - the effective realization of the right to the presence of a lawyer and the introduction of systematic audio-visual recording of all interviews conducted by the police - are persistently ignored. Šabić pointed out that in this case there is something worse than "turning a blind eye" when the police violates the law, namely that the MUP, by announcing that the suspect died of natural causes because he "suddenly fell ill", deliberately misled the public and blatantly tried to cover it up a serious crime.
If the expert's report, which seems to be certain, confirms that he died as a result of a beating and that he had many clearly visible injuries, this is a matter of conscious, deliberate deception of the public, of a brazen attempt to cover up a serious crime, Sabić believes.
Thus, in the case of the deceased girl, whose body is still being searched for, a kind of twist happened. It turns out that it will be proven that the police kill the suspects and then cover it up, rather than that the suspects killed the girl and covered it up.
"When someone is a suspect, you know how the police behave and how evidence is collected." But the police failed here, of course, because we have a crime, but we don't have a body. A criminal act without evidence," researcher Maja Bjeloš from the Belgrade Center for Security Policy told "Vreme" earlier.
Sloppy investigation
Earlier, lawyer Marko Pantić told "Vreme" that the case will have a very difficult legal conclusion without a body.
"Confession is important evidence. Especially if we take into account the reconstruction of the event that the suspect verbally described how everything happened, and then led the police to some places where it allegedly took place. We learned from the police that they even took them to different places, but the body was not found. "I am afraid that if the body is not found, the prosecution will not be able to gather material for the indictment", says Pantić.
Given that time is running inexorably, says Pantić, the question is also when the body would be found, whether the cause of death could be established.
"As I already said for Vreme, if it were established that a child lost his life as a result of a traffic accident, that would be a completely different legal qualification compared to what the police said in public and what was written in the tabloids. that the child was subsequently killed. The difference is that in the first case the sentence is up to 12 years in prison, while in the second we are talking about life imprisonment", he explains.
The disappearance of a two-year-old girl from Bor was reported at the end of March, and ten days later it was announced that she had been killed. Two workers of Bor "Vodovod" were arrested, one of whom allegedly confessed to the crime.
