The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights is concerned by the brutal and inhuman police conduct in the case of Belgrader Vladimir Radojčić (28), whom the Smederevo police subjected to torture and cruel and inhuman treatment on 26 February. The authorities are obliged to investigate this and all other cases where there is reasonable doubt that torture or humiliating treatment had been committed and to punish the perpetrators of the crime. The BCHR on this opportunity recalls another obligation of the FRY authorities – to incriminate torture as a separate crime.
The FRY still has not fulfilled this obligation arising from the UN Convention against Torture ratified by the former SFRY back in 1991. Torture thus is not incriminated as a separate act of crime in the Yugoslav criminal legislation. The UN Committee against Torture criticised the FRY in 1998 because the Yugoslav laws do not include a provision defining torture as a separate act of crime and recommended to the FRY to introduce such a provision in its criminal law.
The authors of the amendments to the FRY Criminal Code adopted in November 2001 did not heed the FRY’s obligation to define torture as a crime.
The BCHR calls on the Yugoslav authorities to fulfil the obligation they had undertaken when they ratified the UN Convention against Torture and to incriminate torture as a separate crime.
