Piperović: For the first time in my career, I have experienced a client who does not want his detention lifted

After former senior police official Zoran Lazović told the High Court in Podgorica during a hearing that he had, for the fifth time, rejected his lawyer’s request to seek the lifting of his detention, which he has been held in since April 2024, his defence attorney Zoran Piperović said that this was the first time in his career he had encountered such a situation.

- For the first time in my career, I have experienced a client being unequivocal in his position that no request should be made to lift his detention. This is a man who is nearly 70 years old. I told him that almost all the evidence listed in the indictment had been presented, that there was no longer any reasonable suspicion that he had committed the criminal offences in question, and that it was logical for us to seek the lifting of his detention. At the same time, it should be stressed that when I previously insisted several times and requested that his detention be lifted, Lazović told me: „Did I not tell you not to do that, because I do not want to be released until the proceedings are concluded?“ - Piperović told Portal ETV.

The lawyer also recalled the prosecution’s motion for Lazović’s detention, specifically the first ground cited - the risk of flight.

- When the motion stated, and the court repeated it, that, due to the defendant’s personal characteristics and traits, it was to be expected that he would flee and leave his family, I said that such claims - which could only be made by a doctor, psychiatrist or neuropsychiatrist - were, quite unnecessarily and in an unusual manner, disparaging the defendant’s personality. Whoever that person may be. Because such characteristics can only be assessed by medical professionals, not lawyers - Piperović stressed.

Lazović’s defence lawyer said that what he described as the absurd claims used to disparage his client’s character were now becoming apparent.

- I only wanted to say this for the benefit of the public: this is a serious and responsible man who has already spent two and a half years in detention and who wants to respect, however difficult that may be for him, the court’s position that his detention should have been ordered and the indictment confirmed. And now all the absurd claims that, as I have stated above, were used to disparage our client’s character are becoming clear, because both the court and the prosecution know that Zoran Lazović would never, under any circumstances, flee - Piperović said.