Stop the Police Torture

Press release

Belgrade, March 21, 2006

On Wednesday, March 15, 2006, several policemen from the Kikinda police station were suspected of having so brutally beaten up the 28-year-old Mihalj Koloncaj, the town's resident, that his spleen had to be removed. In October 2004, after a police patrol from the same station intervened, policeman Sasa Mijin was suspected of having fatally injured his townsman Zdravko Trivan. Criminal proceedings against the accused were instituted in both cases, while a number of policemen were suspended for misconduct.

Though the authorities acted by the book in both cases, the fact is that they have done nothing to systematically prevent any police torture, let alone such brutal beatings that result in death or physical disability.

The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia once again highlights it is eleventh hour for a radical reform of police forces, which not only implies lustration of all policemen who have been directly involved in most brutal forms of torture and violation of human rights over the past 15 years, but also a thorough change in the educational system for new cadres and courses of in-service training for all members of police forces in the concept of human rights and contemporary, legal methods of investigation.

It goes without saying that such reform calls for developed mechanisms of independent control over the legality of the police's operation.