The Police Administration has refused to extend key provisions of the Memorandum of Cooperation with the Civic Alliance, which enabled independent oversight of the treatment of persons deprived of liberty through regular monitoring and unannounced visits to security departments and police premises where detained persons are held.
This mechanism was established in 2015 and functioned for eleven years without a single obstacle, under several different leaderships of the Ministry of Interior and the Police Administration. It resulted in numerous reports documenting the conditions found in security departments and the conduct of police officers towards persons deprived of liberty. Such a reversal in practice speaks volumes about the direction in which the Police Administration is moving – towards closing the system at the expense of human rights and undermining a mechanism that has been carefully built over years.
The Memorandum that most recently formalised this cooperation was signed in May 2021 with the Ministry of Interior and the Police Administration and was formally valid until 31 May of this year. The current Director of the Police Administration was appointed Acting Director in December 2024 and elected as Director with a full mandate on 27 December 2025. For a full year and a half, until the expiry of the Memorandum, unannounced visits and other activities covered by this cooperation continued without interruption, while Mr Šćepanović was already heading the Police Administration. Following the expiry of the Memorandum, we addressed the signatories with a request to extend the cooperation. Instead of the expected continuation, we received an official response stating that the provisions underpinning the Memorandum were unacceptable to the Police Administration.
We responded by submitting a letter in which we provided a detailed explanation of why, in our assessment, the arguments presented lacked legal grounds, and proposed a meeting to discuss the disputed issues. We have not received an official response, which, after eleven years of cooperation, is genuinely surprising.
As a reason for rejecting the extension, the Police Administration referred to the existence of independent oversight mechanisms, namely the CPT and the Ombudsman through the work of the National Preventive Mechanism. However, neither of these mechanisms was established in 2026. Both existed at the time when cooperation with the Civic Alliance was initiated, as well as throughout the entire period during which this cooperation functioned without obstacles. Neither the Constitution nor the Law on Internal Affairs, referred to by the Police Administration, contains a provision that would make this type of cooperation legally unacceptable. On the contrary, the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, the body responsible for interpreting the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, stated as early as 2010 that preventive work must not be exclusive and that the role of national preventive mechanisms should be supported and complemented by civil society. The involvement of non-governmental organisations in monitoring places of deprivation of liberty is not an exception elsewhere in Europe either; it is a recognised and supported model of good practice. The arguments invoked by the Police Administration simply do not stand.
The continued necessity of independent oversight is demonstrated by the findings of our team from last year in Bijelo Polje, which we publicly presented at the time. During an unannounced visit to the Security Department, which also serves as the headquarters of the Northern Regional Security Centre, we found detention premises in completely inadequate conditions, with damaged furniture, deteriorated infrastructure and hygiene conditions below the required minimum standards. It was precisely due to our unannounced visit that these findings became available to the public.
In addition to monitoring visits, our team has documented cases of torture for years, many of which resulted in court proceedings and final convictions of police officers. Among them is the case of the brutal beating of Mijo Martinović in 2021, which our team documented on the ground and publicly reported on for the first time. During the same period, we recorded twenty-four additional cases of abuse of authority and ill-treatment, while over the course of a decade of work we have documented dozens of similar cases throughout Montenegro. The same applies to the unrest in Cetinje in 2021, prior to the enthronement ceremony, when none of the other oversight mechanisms referred to by Mr Šćepanović were present on the ground, while our team visited the Cetinje Security Department and spoke with persons deprived of liberty. Through all these cases, as well as through regular monitoring, we followed and documented situations which the National Preventive Mechanism, due to its workload and limited capacities, was not always able to identify in real time. In that regard, we acted as its extended arm, regularly and promptly informing the Police Administration of all findings.
The timing and context of this decision cannot be ignored. In addition to highlighting the conditions found at the Security Department in Bijelo Polje, the Civic Alliance publicly criticised the Law on Internal Affairs, particularly provisions concerning the commission for determining security obstacles, which deprive police officers classified as a “security risk” of the right to defence in regular disciplinary proceedings — a law that was publicly defended at the time by the current Director of the Police Administration. The validity of these concerns was later confirmed by the Agency for Prevention of Corruption, and amendments to the disputed provisions are also part of the recently signed agreement between the government and the opposition. In light of this chronology, it is the responsibility of the Police Administration to explain to the public why a practice that was acceptable for eleven years, and which had never been questioned by previous leaderships, has suddenly become unacceptable.
The above clearly indicates that the internal affairs system is becoming increasingly closed at the expense of the human rights of persons deprived of liberty, precisely at a time when our findings demonstrate that independent oversight is more necessary than ever.
We will inform the CPT, the Delegation of the European Union, the Council of Europe and the OSCE, as well as our partners with whom we have cooperated for years on improving the human rights situation in Montenegro, about all the circumstances outlined above. Through numerous programmes and recommendations, these institutions have for decades invested precisely in developing such mechanisms of cooperation between civil society and the police and have a legitimate interest in being informed about the circumstances under which one of the successful examples of such cooperation in the region is being discontinued.
We remain convinced that there is no genuine need to change a practice that functioned effectively for eleven years, and that the decision to terminate this cooperation was made far beyond legal and professional considerations. Accordingly, the Civic Alliance will continue to insist on the full renewal of the Memorandum of Cooperation.
Milan Radović
Civic Alliance
