Montenegro’s Special State Prosecutor, Milivoje Katnic – long resented by key figures in the government – was forcibly retired on Thursday, which he called an ‘exclusively political decision’.
Montenegro’s Special State Prosecutor Milivoje Katnic at a press conference in Podgorica. Photo: PR Centar
Montenegro’s outgoing Special State Prosecutor, Milivoje Katnic, said his early retirerment on Thursday was the result of a political vendetta waged by parties in the current government.
Katnic was deeply unpopular with some parties in the government for his role in securing guilty verdicts against several of their leaders when they were in opposition.
Under a new Prosecution Law, the Prosecution Council confirmed Katnic’s retirement and announced the election of a successor in the coming months.
On Tuesday, Katnic said he was being forced into retirement and accused the ruling majority of exerting political influence on the Prosecution Council to get rid of him.
“This is an exclusively political decision. The main goal is the removal of the Special State Prosecutor, initiated by those against whom our office initiated criminal proceedings for serious crimes”, Katnic said in a letter to the Prosecution Council.
On Thursday, a lawyer, Veselin Radulovic, said the ruling parties had been trying to get of Katnic for months. “For more than a year, the ruling parties have been looking for a way to remove Katnic from office, and they did so with changes to the Prosecution Law.
“It’s bad if the only goal was to remove Katnic, so Prosecution Council has to make positive changes to the work of the Special Prosecutor’s Office,” he told the public broadcaster.
Last May, the ruling majority voted changes to the law governing prosecution appointments despite concerns about potential politicization raised by the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s advisory body on constitutional law.
The changes paved the way to the dismissal of Supreme State Prosecutor Ivica Stankovic and Katnic, both highly contentious figures because of their links to the former government led by the Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS.
On June 10, Stankovic and several other prominent prosecutors retired, but Katnic refused to resign, despite the accusations made against him.
Katnic served as Special State Prosecutor for two mandates, the first time beginning in June 2015.
On December 29, parliament elected a new Prosecution Council, saying it would open the way to necessary judiciary reforms. On February 5, prosecutor Maja Jovanovic was elected as interim Supreme State Prosecutor.
Katnic was highly unpopular with the former opposition for his role in securing guilty verdicts for 13 people – including two leaders of the Democratic Front, Andrija Mandic and Milan Knezevic – for plotting to overthrow the previous DPS-led government in 2016.
He filed an indictment against two Democratic Front leaders, Andrija Mandic and Milan Knezevic, for staging an attempted coup in October 2016.
In a first-instance verdict in May 2019, the Higher Court sentenced 13 people, including Mandic, Knezevic, two Russian military intelligence officers and eight Serbs to up to 15 years in prison for staging an attempted coup.
On February 5, Montenegro’s Appeal Court annulled the first-instance verdicts, asking the Higher Court to repeat the trial that former opposition leaders claimed was politically led.
In its latest report on Montenegro, the European Commission noted only “limited progress” in the fight against corruption, warning that the prosecution continues to be perceived as vulnerable to political interference and saying cases of high-level corruption have to be further consolidated.
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