Student of the Faculty of Technical Sciences at the University of Novi Sad, Luka Mihajlović, who was brutally beaten by members of the Gendarmerie in Belgrade during the Vidovdan protest, has still not fully recovered from the severe injuries he sustained that night. The public remembers that after surgery he was tied to a hospital bed, and four months later it turned out that none of the charges against him held up. The indictment was dismissed due to a lack of evidence and the fact that the witness questioned did not confirm the commission of a crime.
Do you remember Luka Mihajlović? The student who, after the Vidovdan protest and police actions, ended up bloodied on the asphalt. Beaten, arrested, and handcuffed to a hospital bed. What followed was an acquittal, which his family learned about only by chance – through a message from a social worker who removed his ankle monitor.
“Now there’s simply a bitter taste in our mouths because this could have been resolved much earlier, and instead we spent days under stress, wondering whether his detention would be extended. While the reaction to his release from house arrest was joy, literally screams of happiness in the house, at the moment we read in that same document the passing mention that the indictment was dismissed, we were not happy, but angry. I don’t know whether this is laziness or a game of nerves on the part of the prosecution, but it is certainly arrogance,” said Jelena Mihajlović, sister of the beaten student, for N1.
That arrogance, she says, also left a mark on his body – in the form of three skull fractures.
The use of excessive force is confirmed by footage on social networks. And that it was excessive to tie him to a hospital bed is confirmed by his lawyer.
“I don’t think this kind of treatment was applied even to those who ran over people at pedestrian crossings – doctors, students – and were later pardoned. So our problem lies in the fact that people are treated differently depending on whether you are a loyalist or not,” said Božo Prelević, lawyer of Luka Mihajlović.
The indictment fell because there was no evidence, but questions remain – who is responsible for the brutality and abuse?
“The Ministry of Internal Affairs, yes, those are the officers who brutally beat him, who tortured him psychologically and physically throughout this entire process, then the prosecution, which lacks documents, and then we have judges at the Higher Court who also get reassigned and manipulated in his case,” said Jelena, Luka Mihajlović’s sister.
“Those from the police who testified, testified honestly. Based on that, the prosecutor did not want to prolong the process by leaving the case unfinished or seeking new evidence, but instead dismissed the criminal complaint,” stated Prelević.
The criminal complaint has been dismissed, the indictment has fallen, but the family says the case will not be shelved.
“I think it’s fair to mention that at the very beginning of this whole chaos we had the idea to transfer the entire process beyond the borders of Serbia, and I will only say that this idea has not left us yet,” said his sister Jelena.
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Source: Nova.rs, Foto: R.Z. / ATAImages