Constitution Defenders Demand Probe Into Cvijan's Death

The association known as Ustavobranitelji (Constitution Defenders) published a statement on August 8 responding to claims made by the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade about the death of Vladimir Cvijan, a lawyer and former official of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). The statement is signed by three members of the association’s governing board, lawyers Cedomir Kokanovic, Jovan Rajic and Ivan Ninic, and its core demand is that an investigation be opened into Cvijan’s death and that those who failed to conduct one be held accountable.

The trigger was a prosecutor’s statement issued on August 1, in which the institution disclosed parts of the autopsy record and said Cvijan’s death resulted from drowning, with findings showing he was intoxicated with alcohol at the time. The Prosecutor’s Office pre-emptively apologized to Cvijan’s family for publishing the details, explaining it was forced to do so in order to refute claims by some lawyers that Cvijan had been murdered.

What the association disputes

Ustavobranitelji does not dispute the drowning finding itself. It disputes the conclusion the Prosecutor’s Office drew from it. The statement says it is “not clear who ‘drowned’ Vladimir Cvijan” and lists three ways a person ends up drowned: murder, suicide and accident.

“The first way is murder, meaning the deliberate drowning of Vladimir Cvijan by third parties. The second way is suicide. And the third way is an accident, meaning tripping or an accidental fall into the water, which the Prosecutor’s Office is evidently trying to sell to the public, by stressing, twice, Vladimir Cvijan’s alleged intoxication, following the well known formula used for the helicopter crash and pinning the blame on pilot Omer Mehic,” the Ustavobranitelji governing board said in its statement.

The comparison to the helicopter crash is not incidental. Through it, the lawyers suggest a pattern rather than a single mistake, a heavier accusation than saying one case was handled poorly.

The second point of dispute concerns the injuries. Ustavobranitelji says the autopsy record it obtained from the Prosecutor’s Office itself contains a description of a forehead wound that, in shape and size, matches a blow from a pistol barrel, even though the Prosecutor’s Office stated there were no traces of mechanical injury. The association also points to the record’s wording that the teeth were present “for the most part.”

What the Prosecutor’s Office said

On August 1, the Prosecutor’s Office stood by the assessment it gave eight years earlier.

“There was no indication whatsoever pointing to the commission of a criminal offense,” the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade said.

The case was archived on March 27, 2018, through an internal note by the prosecutor handling it. The Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the claims about the forehead wound and the teeth as arbitrary, arguing that the public is not being shown the record in full.

Why the timeline matters here

Cvijan died on January 5, 2018. From that day until the case was archived, 81 days passed. This was the death of a lawyer who had served as a member of parliament for the ruling party, and the file was closed in under three months, without an investigation that would have distinguished between the three scenarios the lawyers now list.

What follows is the period that keeps this case in the public eye. The fact that Cvijan was dead was kept from the public until March 2021, when the Prosecutor’s Office announced that it was a case of drowning in the Danube. The autopsy findings first became public that same year. Between the death and the first official information lie three years, and the question of who decided, and on whose orders, that nothing would be disclosed during that time.

Our earlier report on the release of parts of the autopsy showed that the Prosecutor’s Office first reacted only after lawyers voiced suspicion of murder on a podcast. This latest exchange confirms that pattern: the institution is not reopening the case, it is defending the 2018 decision, while the other side is demanding that the decision be reviewed.

Will an investigation be opened?

The Ustavobranitelji demand does not take the form of a criminal complaint that would obligate the Prosecutor’s Office to act within a deadline. It is public pressure and a legal argument delivered through a statement. The Prosecutor’s Office, for its part, asked the Belgrade Bar Association to respond to the lawyers’ statements, shifting the dispute onto the professional body as well.

Two outcomes can be named. The first is that the Prosecutor’s Office holds its position on archiving the case, in which case the dispute moves into the jurisdiction of the Belgrade Bar Association and stays on the level of public statements. The second is that the case is formally reopened, which would require a new expert review of the autopsy findings, since the entire disagreement comes down to interpreting the same document. Ustavobranitelji has said it will not back down, so the next move belongs to the Prosecutor’s Office and the Belgrade Bar Association.