“Irrelevant” is the word most often uttered at today’s main trial, following the criminal complaint by judge Dušanka Djordjević and her husband, lawyer Aleksandar Djordjević, against Stevan Dojčinović, editor-in-chief of the Krik portal , and Bojana Pavlović. “I forbid the question, because it is irrelevant to the facts of the criminal case, which are the subject of proof in this proceeding”, pronounced the judge Dušica Ristić, and these words were addressed to the lawyer of the plaintiff Dušanka Djordjević, to almost every question he tried to ask Stevan Dojčinović, after the defense he gave in this main trial.
In the end, Judge Ristić noted the remarks she made in the minutes, including the one that it is inadmissible for the lawyer to interrupt the judge while dictating the minutes with an attempt to determine what will be entered into the minutes.
The general impression is that the lawyers have become aware of the weakness of the criminal complaint and the lack of arguments in it, so they are trying to get some new argument through the questioning of the accused. In the lawsuit, as proof that Stevan Dojčinović is a dangerous person and because of this Judge Djordjević feels threatened, with the only evidence, the text from the tabloid Informer, because of which Dojčinović sued this tabloid and received a final judgment with compensation for damages due to lies, which is now submitted by a judge of the Court of Appeal as valid evidence. Judge Dušica Ristić consistently adhered to the Law on Criminal Procedure, prohibiting often meaningless questions. The lawyer of the judge of the Court of Appeal, Dušanka Djordjević, asked, among other things, whether the accused knows what the cadastre is for, i.e. what is the purpose of the cadastre database, to which Dojčinović explained plastically that when you buy an apartment, for example. from judge Djordjević, so you can see whether it is registered or mortgaged, etc. Therefore, it is in the service of transparency, which Krik also stands for. The same lawyer also asked why it was not checked how the property was acquired and received a very clear answer that Judge Djordjević was contacted for a discussion on that topic, but she refused, sending threats of a lawsuit and long before the information about her was published in the “Judge Who Judges” database, concluding that all the information that was published was from publicly available sources, or was obtained based on a request for access to information of public importance and is completely accurate.
And that is exactly the paradox: the judge and her husband are suing Krik for the accurately transmitted information about their property, on the Krik portal , whose mission, in addition to investigating crime and corruption, is transparency.
To the question, what is the job of the editor-in-chief, Dojčinović answered: it is the same as the director of the police, he manages the police, but he does not have to be involved in every action and every case that is being investigated.
It might seem comical that in this criminal case, for the first time, a judge with his wife, a former BIA official, is suing journalists, demanding a prison sentence of 10 months each and a ban on working in journalism for 2 years, which is a complete precedent, not only in Serbia but also in Europe. (In another parallel civil lawsuit, a judge is seeking compensation of 760,000 dinars)
All because of the true information that they have transmitted in the database where there are 50 judges in which their careers, the most important cases and the assets they have are presented. All from publicly available data. This is why this trial attracted worldwide attention, so that in addition to the journalists and representatives of the journalists’ association following the trial, there are also representatives of the OSCE, the Kingdom of Sweden and the Netherlands, and the Federal Republic of Germany.
Stevan Dojčinovic, editor-in-chief of Krik , testified today at the main hearing, who presented his defense, in which he stated that:
The database Judge who judges is modeled after similar databases that exist in some other countries. It was created after the award-winning database on politicians, which was also audited by the Commissioner for Important Information.
That more than a third of the judges participated in the creation of this database, answering questions or supplementing it with new information.
That this lawsuit is the intention of the plaintiff Djordjević to make the newsroom obsolete, and to harass the defendants, which was evident even before the database appeared, through the judge’s threat to sue even before she saw it published.
That Judge Djordjević is a public figure and a public official and that, as such, she must accept greater exposure to the public and criticism, that there is a legitimate interest of the public in having access to basic information about her career and assets. In addition to her participation in the final acquittal in the case of the murder of journalist Slavko Ćuruvija, there was also some kind of affair in the public eye from 20 years ago, when she judged a case in which her current husband represented one of the parties in the dispute (although they were in a relationship at the time).
Dojčinović also emphasized that the claim was manipulated by claiming that the addresses of real estate owned by this married couple were published in the database, which is absolutely incorrect, although there is publicly available data for this in the cadastre. The database only contains the listed properties and their approximate location by municipality, because in this way the approximate value of the property can be determined.
Krik’s lawyer, Kruna Savović, repeatedly requested that journalist Jelena Radivojević, who collected data for the profile and who contacted judge Djordjević, be heard as a witness in this case, but judge’s lawyers opposed this proposal. The defendant Bojana Pavlović only created a promotional text, when the base was already created.
In the two hours of the main trial, we heard the convincing defense of Stevan Dojčinović, irrelevant questions from the prosecutor’s lawyer, and the professional conduct of the main trial by judge Dušica Ristić. The continuation of the main trial is scheduled for the beginning of July.
Source: Javni servis
