Europe’s top rights body blasts Serbia over police abuse

The Council of Europe on Thursday slammed Serbia for failing to rein in police abuse, saying in a report that alleged violence by officers could amount to torture.

The new report comes less than a year following a visit to Serbia in March 2023 by a delegation from the council’s anti-torture committee.

During its research trip, representatives from the committee found individuals in police custody in Serbia run the risk of facing ill-treatment that “might amount to torture”, including in facilities in the capital Belgrade.

“The allegations consisted of punches, slaps, kicks and blows with truncheons as well as practices such as placing a plastic bag over the head of criminal suspects and administering electric shocks from a hand-held device at the time of the arrest or at a police station,” the council said in a statement.

The report went on to lambast the country’s police force, saying the council’s representatives saw little improvement in the treatment of detained persons following previous visits by delegations in 2017 and 2021.

The group also criticised Serbian authorities over the conditions in which many people in police custody were held.

Pre-trial detention centres were often severely overcrowded, according to the report, while other facilities — especially those outside of Belgrade — were in a poor state of repair and lacked basic hygiene.

The committee called on “Serbian authorities to adopt and implement a coherent strategy to eradicate police ill-treatment which should include a message of zero-tolerance from the highest political level.”

The council also suggested introducing mandatory training programmes for police inspectors to improve investigative interviewing skills, while also strengthening legal safeguards for criminal suspects.

The publication of the report comes just weeks after Serbian fringe opposition figure Nikola Sandulovic was allegedly beaten in custody, following his arrest after he placed flowers on the grave of an ethnic Albanian resistance leader.

According to his lawyer, Sandulovic was beaten by around fifteen members of the intelligence services — who acknowledged his arrest but denied the allegations of abuse.

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AFP

(NAMPA / AFP)