The Police Directorate, on behalf of the Prosecutor’s Office, has called upon MANS to submit by tomorrow at noon information relating to: “the circumstances surrounding the video of Safet Kalić’s wedding,” where several individuals who are alleged to be heads of organized crime groups in Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina – according to the police forces of several countries – are seen to be mingling with high functionaries of Montenegro’s National Security Agency (NSA). According to information received today from the police, the video was apparently posted online from a web address belonging to MANS.
In states where the aim of the police and prosecutors is to confront organized crime, such institutions do everything in their power to protect those who are willing to contribute to such efforts. Instead of investing all their resources in ensuring that the ‘guests’ at Kalić’s wedding be placed in prison, our police and prosecutors are investigating members of MANS concerning how the recording was posted online. Therefore, these institutions are directly assisting criminals who don’t want people to discuss their affairs or their wedding guests from the ranks of state security.
Moreover, a year after the release of the controversial video – and following last years interrogation of MANS’ deputy executive director Veselin Bajčeta and journalist Petar Komnenić – the police and prosecutors are now for the second time calling on MANS representatives to answer the same questions (while at the same time failing to declare what criminal acts they are investigating exactly).
It should be noted that criminal acts relating to the unauthorized disclosure of information that endangers privacy should be investigated only through private complaints, not ex officio. It logically follows that such an investigation should have been initiated by Safet Kalić or one of his guests suspected of heading powerful organized crime groups. However, the investigations in this case are actually being led by the police and prosecutors, raising the question as to what ends exactly this is being done (if not to help criminals from the region locate those who dare speak about their affairs).
We are convinced that instructions for this type of behavior by the police and prosecturos were handed down by the leadership of the Police Directorate and the Prosecutor’s Office, since the guests at this wedding were no ordinary citizens nor does the police routinely question NGO representatives who work on organized crime issues. Therefore, we believe that the Police Director Veselin Veljović and the Supreme State Prosecutor Ranka Čarapić should be held personally accountable if the safety of anyone from MANS is endangered by the heads of organized crime groups seen commiserating with the heads of the NSA at Safet Kalić’s wedding.
We are certain that Mr. Veljović and Ms. Čarapić are very much aware that with these ‘investigations’ they are only assisting ‘moral criminals’ in silencing those who dare to speak about their suspicious affairs. Of course, the question poses itself as to what their personal motivations for drawing target signs around our heads could be at this moment, a full year after the release of the video.
Nevertheless, regardless of all this, MANS will go to the police tomorrow and declare our belief that the video recording was posted by a conscientious citizen who wanted to ensure that criminals end up where they deserve – in prison – instead of working with and befriending the heads of the intelligence agency unimpeded (an agency that should instead be defending us from such dangerous individuals).
Since the police, as we learned, confirmed that the video was posted from an address that belongs to MANS, we would like to suggest the possibility that it was an honorable member of the NSA who decided to enter our networks and release such information about their own colleagues – found partying with those that the service itself has identified as mafia heads – in order to make public a question of public interest and of particular importance for the security of the state and all of its citizens.
