FREE THE BELGRADE SIX!

All the independent observers unanimously agree that the trial against the Belgrade Six is purely (and irrationally) politically motivated, and that the prosecutors' qualification of the charges as "international terrorism" is grotesque and legally unsustainable. A number of eminent lawyers have presented detailed analyses and arguments supporting this assessment. We will not proceed to repeat their arguments and the results of their expert analyses of the "18-euro intertnational terrorism" indictment, since they are already included in the official statement by the Action Committee of the Campaign Against Political Repression, which has been submitted to the media and published in full.

What has so far been drawing the attention of the independent public, is the legal qualification of the "act" and the utterly disproportionate application of state power against the defendants (i.e. their five-month-long custody), due to the fact that this was the only information on the contents of the indictment so far available to the public, as well as the fact that they are the weakest points of these political charges.

However, since the activists of the Campaign Against Political Repression have published the formal indictment, the public can now easily learn that these are far from being the only weak points of the charges, and that, moreover, this indictment has no strong, serious, sustainable points whatsoever.

It is evident from the indictment itself that there are not even any legal grounds to qualify the "act" as attempt at causing general public danger – given that the mixture in the bottles thrown at the sidewalk in front of the embassy (not "at the embassy" itself) was not flammable, and therefore any attempt at an "attack" with this sort of mixture should consequently be legally qualified as a failed attempt.

The weakest point of the indictment, however, is its complete disability to prove that the six defendants actually participated in throwing those bottles at the sidewalk in front of the Greek embassy. The assumption brought forward in the indictment, that it was the six of them who organized and performed this throwing of two bottles containing inflammable matter, is based primarily on the "confession" of two of the defendants.

We cannot help but remind that the defentant's confession used to be considered sufficient evidence of guilt in legal theory and practice of the Medieval Inquisition. Who exactly is it that is using this kind of a trial in an attempt to push Serbia and its Judicary into the historical darkness of the Inquisition, using for the purpose two broken bottles of inflammable matter on the sidewalk outside the Greek embassy?

For these reasons, having been acquainted with the text of the indictment in its entirety, we demand that the charges be altogether dropped, and that the six defendants be released without further delay.

Campaign Against Political Repression
Action Committee of the Campaign – the Administrators of Campaign's web-site

Filip Šaćirović
Jaćim Milunović
Vladimir Marković
Nenad Glišić
Pavluško Imširović
Milan Stojanović
Ivan Feher
Aleksandra Spasov
Slobodan Stamenčić