Prosecutor on the Side of Injustice

By Amra Varatanović

The only truth prosecutor Vlado Mišković stated was that he has been a prosecutor for 40 years, everything else is a lie, said lawyer Ifet Feraget after a hearing at the Supreme Court of FBiH on the appeal of the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor's Office in the Dženan Memić case. The decision is expected by mid-May.

The Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor's Office filed an appeal with the Supreme Court of FBiH seeking to overturn the first-instance acquittal and return the case to the court for a new decision.

Prosecutor Mišković was one of the prosecutors who reviewed the legality of the Cantonal Prosecutor's Office's work in the Memić case, and is now representing that prosecutor's office's appeal before the Supreme Court of FBiH in the same case. Even if there is no legal obstacle, it is not moral that Mišković did not request his recusal from this case.

Another reason why Mišković should have requested his recusal before the Supreme Court of FBiH is the criminal complaint filed against him in October 2018 with the BiH Prosecutor's Office, on suspicion of involvement in the filing of a fabricated indictment against Ljubo and Bekrija Seferović for a traffic accident. In addition to Mišković, a complaint was also filed against two other federal prosecutors, Tihomir Jurka and Hajrija Hadžiomerović-Muftić.

Before the Trial Panel of the Supreme Court of FBiH, Mišković acted as prosecutor, lawyer, and judge. Completely denying the verdict of the Cantonal Court in Sarajevo in the Memić case, he presented new information about the case itself before the Supreme Court of FBiH: the victim Dženan Memić, the sole witness to the event when Memić was injured on February 8, 2016, Alisa Mutap, other witnesses who testified during the court proceedings, the accused Ljubo Seferović..., even though none of this matched what was heard during the nearly two-year court process conducted before the Cantonal Court in Sarajevo.

While presenting the appeal to the Trial Panel, Mišković also defended the findings of the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor's Office's experts, which the court dismissed as incorrect, superficial, and arbitrary. Such was the case with the findings of traffic expert Ševal Kovačević, who, it turned out, invented the movement of Dženan Memić and Alisa Mutap on the night Memić was injured, the scenario of the vehicle hitting pedestrians, as well as the behavior of Memić himself. The court completely dismissed such findings because there was no evidence that a traffic accident had occurred at all.

Mišković almost demanded that the Trial Panel overturn the verdict of the Cantonal Court in Sarajevo, referring to Ljubo Seferović's "triple confession," although he never testified before the Trial Panel of the Cantonal Court in Sarajevo. The court also did not accept the recording of the reconstruction of the event in Velika aleja from June 13 to 14, 2016, because prosecutor Sead Kreštalica questioned the suspect Ljubo Seferović during the reconstruction and led him to a confession.

"During the performance of this procedural action, the prosecutor completely lost sight of the fact that the reconstruction of the event is not conducted for the purpose of questioning the accused, as was done in this specific case. Furthermore, the court determined that during the questioning of the accused Seferović, the prosecutor led him to answers by repeatedly asking him the question 'where is the pedestrian,' to which the accused replied that he did not know, that he did not remember, to which the prosecutor continued to insist that he show the precise location and led him to a spot on the ground where traces marked with yellow arrows, found during the investigation, were visible," states the written ruling of the Cantonal Court in Sarajevo in the Memić case.
The court further states that during the reconstruction, the prosecutor acted in the same way with witness Alisa Mutap.

"The witness explains where the injured Memić and she were, where she persistently repeats that the only landmark for her was the container, that she remembers nothing else, to which the prosecutor says: 'I don't understand, Dženan was here, or did you try to cross the road to that side, maybe you went there, he followed you, somehow, something, considering these traces found, the blood found,' thereby the prosecutor directly suggests to the witness to say something that she did not mention at any point, related to the movements of her and the victim, showing the witness the traces where they were found, which is in direct contradiction with Article 11 of the Law on Criminal Procedure of FBiH, which stipulates that it is forbidden to extort a confession or any other statement from a suspect, accused, or any other person participating in the proceedings," the verdict states. The court declared that reconstruction an illegal piece of evidence. 

Prosecutor Vlado Mišković's name is also linked to the "Pogorelica" case, which was conducted 13 years ago at the Cantonal Court in Sarajevo, and in which the accused in that case were acquitted in the first instance. Mišković, as a federal prosecutor, appealed that verdict, although it is not a usual legal procedure. In January 2008, the Supreme Court of FBiH issued a second-instance acquittal, legally concluding that case.

Prosecutor Mišković also represented the appeal of the Zenica-Doboj Canton Prosecutor's Office in the case against Šemsudin Mehmedović and Nedžad Korajlić, who were acquitted by the Cantonal Court in Zenica in 2005 of charges of illegally distributing weapons and equipment from the MUP warehouse to residents of Zenica and Tešanj. In 2007, the Supreme Court of FBiH issued a final acquittal in that case as well.