With Prosecutorial Investigation towards a Stronger and a More Stable Country

The Republic of Serbia opted for the prosecutorial investigation concept with all the advantages and disadvantages that follow due to the growing criminality, transnational crime and terrorism rates and the necessity for the state response and the criminal legal repression to be much stronger”, State-Secretary of the Ministry of Justice Radomir Ilić stated today at the regional conference “Prosecutorial Investigation: Regional Criminal Procedure Legislations and Experiences in Application”, which was organised by OSCE Mission to Serbia.

Ilić emphasised that the new Criminal Procedure Code was offering certain new solutions which needed to be fully applied by the police, the prosecution offices and the courts of law. “The Ministry of Justice must monitor the application of the Criminal Procedure Code and, if necessary, propose amendments to it. Not all the answers, however, can be found in the normative form; the prosecution too ought to be reformed and strengthened, made capable to hold and conduct prosecutorial investigations properly“, Ilić added.

Stressing the advantages of the new CPC, Ilić said that the new Code was more democratic than the previous one for a large portion of the work that the police was deciding on was now in the hands of the prosecutors, which enabled them to manage pre-criminal proceedings, all of which should also further the concept of prosecutorial investigation.

“It is necessary to provide better rooms for the prosecutors, give them more clerks, associates and deputies. Additionally, it is necessary to connect a prosecutor with other state authorities and so give him/her all the tools he/she needs in order to do his/her jobs well“, the State-Secretary of the Ministry of Justice concluded.

The Head of OSCE Mission to Serbia Ambassador Peter Burkhard, the President of the Supreme Court of Cassation and the High Judicial Council Dragomir Milojević, Deputy Public Prosecutor for the Republic Milan Bojković, as well as the President of the Serbian Bar Association Dragoljub Đorđević, also addressed everyone present at the conference.