One of the saddest episodes in Slovenian judiciary, the Novič case, should have officially become obsolete on October 11th, 2020. Nevertheless, this did not happen. “So far, we have made two initiatives for the bench to rule on the statute of limitations. We received a negative response to both initiatives in the sense that the Senate will not rule. I expect something similar in the future. We do not even know when the case is supposed to become absolutely obsolete, even after the extension due to the corona law. We anticipate that somewhere in the second half of December,” has commented Milko Novič for Nova24TV.
The accused Milko Novič was going through an ordeal that no one in the world deserves. In December 2014, the director of the Institute of Chemistry, dr. Janko Jamnik was murdered in front of the Via Bona restaurant, shortly after half past seven in the evening. Unusually quickly Novič became the suspect since he allegedly harboured personal grievances against Jamnik in the past. But as it turned out later, Jamnik and Novič were both victims of criminal groups from the Institute of Chemistry. Through various clients, the Institute allegedly made drugs from chemical compounds for various criminal groups. The case should have become statute-barred on October 11th, 2020, however, as Novič told us, he does not know how the judge will decide at the upcoming hearing. Now they are waiting for the third opinion of forensic experts in ballistics and chemistry from Austria. “At the least hearing, we were told that the Austrians were expected to issue an opinion within four to six weeks,” said Novič.
“On December 12th, 2020 it will be six years since the country has tortured and harassed me on this matter. Of that, I spent nearly three and a half years in detention and imprisonment. I would like to forget the past years, but it does not work like that. I have no confidence in our legal system and I am afraid that the situation will repeat itself, and the system would put me back in prison,” Novič answered. It is very difficult for him to live like this, which he and his family know too well. He will also never forget the public accusations of the former director of the NPU, Darko Majhenič, on Planet TV on the day of his arrest. “All this was not easy.”
Due to the acquittal judge Zvjezdan Radonjić got on the wrong side of District Court President Marjan Pogačnik
Judge Zvjezdan Radonjić played a decisive role in the trial by acquitting Milko Novič last year. As the gentleman at the prosecutor’s office were not satisfied, the case was sent to a higher court, where Radonjič’s verdict was overturned and returned to the first instance court. There they held some court hearing, however, did not bring the retrial to an end.
Novič does not believe in the final acquittal. “A judge who judged fairly was eliminated by the system. There was a lot of time for a fair trial, but I did not experience it. Except with Judge Radonjič,” Novič confided. According to Novič, the process has been delayed since the indictment became final. In a six-year-long process he finds the final few weeks of the process to be the most crucial. “The desire for a fair and fast trial simply do not go hand in hand.”
In the past, we have reported that the wheels of the deep country simply did not want to release Novič and after some suspicious legal practices intended to convict him again for an act he did not commit. The deep country took a deep fall when it entrusted the case to the brave and independent judge Radonjić, who did not allow himself to be confused by the pressure of the forces that wanted to condemn Novič in any way. As it did not turn out as expected, the judge was then punished with suspension.
“When I got the case for trial, five or six judges said it is good you are the one who received the trial because you are the only one able to finish it. By that they did not mean that I was so capable, rather they thought I was so independent. I studied the matter. Prior to the trial I went to the top legal expert and told him word for word what was going to happen at the trial. And everything happened,” Radonjić said at the acquittal last year. He also announced that he would ruin his judicial career with this. His words turned out to be prophetic, as the bosses in the Supreme Court harassed him with various proceedings all the time. Up until this year, when he was given a temporary disciplinary suspension. Radonjić was also taken of all the cases he had been working on.
Furthermore, he mentioned that he had been constantly visited by one of the judges demanding that Novič should be convicted. The President of the District Court in Ljubljana, Marjan Pogačnik, had the opportunity to prove himself once and for all and allow a fair trial and decision-making. Given Pogačnik’s actions we could doubt this, as he has repeatedly proved to be a defender of everything except the rule of law. With bizarre manoeuvres the trial dragged on for an inhumanly long time, until the statute of limitation expired, Jamnik’s killer is still free, and Judge Radonjić had to be suspended and is preparing to leave the judicial service. This is an infamous epilogue and a new black dot of our justice. “As I said, I leave it to time, let it happen what they intended for me to happen. I do not believe in this rule of law,” confided Milko Novič at the end.
