Serbia introduced the state of emergency on March 12, the day Prime Minster Zoran Djindjic was assassinated, and lifted it on April 22. Of ten thousand persons arrested during that period, one thousand are still in detention on suspicion of involvement in the murder or in organized crime. Under the legislation adopted in mid-April, the police can prevent these individuals from contacting their lawyers for up to two months.
For the persons arrested during the state of emergency, the two-month period of incommunicado detention expires from May 12 onwards, depending on the date of the arrest.
“The long period in which detainees could not communicate with lawyers is contrary to basic human rights standards,” said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. “The Serbian authorities cannot turn the clock back and erase that violation, but at least they can immediately allow every detainee who has not seen a lawyer a chance to do so.”
Security detainees are allowed access to counsel only when they are examined by an investigating judge. But currently, only three hundred of the approximately one thousand security detainees have been brought before an investigating judge.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Belgrade Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights visited the detainees on one occasion. Human Rights Watch is scheduled to visit the detainees on Tuesday, May 13.
The Serbian parliament adopted amendments to the Law on Organized Crime on April 11, 2003. Serbian human rights groups and lawyers have criticized the law for permitting administrative detention for an excessive duration. The language of the law was unclear as to whether it also denied the detainees access to lawyers. On May 6, Human Rights Watch received an authoritative interpretation from the Serbian Deputy Minister of Justice, confirming that the law does not permit such access.
Human Rights Watch said Serbia’s continued practice of incommunicado detention violates international and European standards and will confound its integration into European institutions. The jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights has established that even an incommunicado detention significantly shorter than currently practiced in Serbia violates the European Convention of Human Rights. In the case of Aksoy v. Turkey (1996), for example, the Court found that fourteen days of incommunicado detention without access to a judge or other judicial officer could not be justified by the serious problem of terrorism in southeast Turkey. Similarly, the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture has repeatedly criticized states for detention without access to lawyers.
Human Rights Watch urged Serbia and Montenegro to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights, which it signed on April 3, 2003, the day the state joined the Council of Europe.
“It is unfortunate that Serbia and Montenegro began its membership in the Council of Europe with this betrayal of the organization’s standards,” said Andersen. “If the Serbian authorities are really committed to the Council of Europe, they should ratify the Convention on Human Rights—and stop practices that blatantly violate it.”
