Lawyer Terzic: Vucic Threatens As Prosecutors Shed Restraints of Executive Power

Vladimir Terzic (YTPrintScreen)

Lawyer Vladimir Terzic stated on April 10 that the growing severity of threats delivered against prosecutors by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was proof that a part of the judicial system had rejected the control of executive power.

Terzic told BETA that, influenced by the months-long students’ blockades and civil protests, a part of the judicial system had shed the restraints of executive power.

“The conscientious part of the prosecution, courts and lawyers are attempting to do their jobs according to the Constitution and laws of Serbia. That is not to the liking of the executive power and the country’s president, as the top exponent of that executive power, whose logistics is provided by persons from criminal environments, and they are getting increasingly nervous,” Terzic said.

“Every regime needs obedient prosecutors, and this one has done that job in a monstrous way – silence has been going on for years, the prosecution is below the police, when the Law on Criminal Proceedings prescribes otherwise – that the prosecution is above the police and that the police act on the orders of the prosecution,” Terzic explained.

Asked about what message was President Vucic delivering to the public by threatening prosecutors, Terzic replied that it was fear from losing power. “The message from such acts of the president and the executive power, and of the wielders of executive power, the tightly controlled National Assembly full of the ruling parties’ acolytes, is that power must be held on to at any cost,” the lawyer pointed out.