The High Court in Podgorica, ruling on the appeals lodged by attorney Dalibor Tomović, legal representative of the injured party Marko Boljević, and by the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica, as well as acting ex officio, quashed the judgment of the Basic Court in Podgorica, K. No. 382/22 of 17 March 2025, by which police inspectors Danilo Grbović, Dalibor Ljekočević, Bojan Vujačić, Ivan Peruničić and Nemanja Vujošević had been acquitted of the charge that, acting as co-perpetrators, they had committed the criminal offence of extorting a statement from Marko Boljević in May 2020.

The case has been remitted to the first-instance court for retrial, and the new main hearing has been scheduled for 9 September 2026.

This case is particularly important because Boljević’s statement was extorted with the aim of prosecuting innocent people for planting explosive devices at the home of security official Duško Golubović and at the Grand café.

Since the attempt to falsely prosecute them failed—because Boljević reported that his statement had been extorted and other evidence also exposed the deception—it is noteworthy that neither of the two incidents involving the planting of explosive devices has been solved to this day.

It is now known that, on the basis of Boljević’s extorted and false statement, the Basic State Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica attempted to place the blame on Jovan Grujičić and Benjamin Mugoša, who had not planted the explosive devices. Grujičić was finally acquitted of the charge of planting the explosives in a judgment which also stated that he had been a victim of police ill-treatment. The Basic State Prosecutor’s Office abandoned the prosecution of Mugoša after it was established that he had been in prison at the time the explosives were planted. Mugoša also reported that he had been subjected to police torture in connection with that case.

Following the acquittal of the police inspectors charged with torturing Boljević in March 2025, we assessed that the judgment demonstrated a troubling approach to the prosecution of torture, under which critical scrutiny was directed exclusively at the victim, while the statements of public officials were accepted uncritically, including those given by colleagues of the accused officers. We also pointed out that Judge Larisa Mijušković-Stamatović, who delivered the judgment after two years of proceedings, criticised the injured party, Boljević, for not reporting the torture that same evening, but “only the following day”, referring to an alleged violation by the victim of the “principle of timely reporting”, a principle unknown in international practice concerning the prosecution of torture.

In addition, the court’s conclusion that the torture had not been proven was based on questionable reasoning that Boljević’s injuries did not necessarily have to have been sustained during his “treatment” by the police, even though, according to the medical findings of both domestic and foreign forensic experts, the injuries were consistent with his account of the torture. It was established in the case that the injuries had resulted from at least 11 blows delivered with fists, feet, so-called volley kicks, and a blunt mechanical object.

In the appeal proceedings, the High Court has now found that the first-instance judgment was delivered in breach of the criminal procedure provisions under Article 386, paragraph 1, item 9 of the Criminal Procedure Code, because it failed to provide reasons concerning decisive facts. Specifically, the first-instance court did not rule on the proposal of the injured party’s legal representative to obtain an expert opinion from a neuropsychiatrist, although that proposal had been submitted in a timely manner as early as 2023.

Almost six years after Marko Boljević was tortured at the Podgorica Security Centre in May 2020 and forced to give a false statement, not a single Police Directorate officer has been convicted in connection with the case.

We expect the first-instance court, in the retrial, to remedy the identified procedural violation, rule on the proposal to obtain a neuropsychiatric expert opinion, and examine the case critically and impartially, in accordance with international standards governing the prosecution of torture. Montenegro is required to comply with these standards under its Constitution and international treaties, and their implementation is also important for fulfilling the country’s obligations in the process of accession to the European Union.