The lawyer of the families of the injured miners announced a new criminal complaint and appeal to the Constitutional Court

The families of the miners who died in the “Soko” mine on April 1, 2022 have announced a new criminal complaint and the initiation of proceedings for compensation of damages, as well as an appeal to the Constitutional Court, because, as they say, they do not agree with the decision of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Niš and the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Aleksinac that the accident in the mine was the result of “force majeure”.

The lawyer of the families of the dead miners, Bratislav Stojanović, said that he considers “shameful” the recent decision of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Nis to reject as unfounded his objection to the decision of the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Aleksinac to reject the criminal complaint filed by the Ministry of Mining and Energy against 14 people due to the accident in the “Soko” mine. “.

The higher public prosecutor’s office, Stojanović said, did not take into account his well-founded objections related to the selective expert examination by the Faculty of Mining and Geology in Belgrade.

“There was an artificial concentration of methane just before the critical event at 4:03 a.m. and some 13 or 14 minutes after that, when there was a methane breakthrough from zero to 100 percent.” However, there was no artificial concentration of methane from 11 p.m. when the miners entered the pit until 4:03 a.m.,” Stojanović pointed out at a press conference in front of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office building in Nis.

He emphasized that he has evidence that the machines in the mine, which are programmed to automatically turn off as soon as the methane concentration in the pit reaches 1.5 percent, were turned off as many as four times on the night of the accident, but that they were “manually” turned on.

“This raises the question of whether there were conditions for the evacuation of miners before the accident happened.” In the same pit, three days before the accident, the leader of the first shift stopped work on his own initiative and took the miners out of the shaft because the concentration of methane was high,” said Stojanović.

According to him, the crime has not expired, so there are conditions for filing a new criminal complaint and he announced a new complaint against 14 persons who were charged with the complaint of the Ministry of Mining and Energy, as well as the dispatcher on duty.

“It will be a criminal report for a criminal offense from Article 288 of the Criminal Code, i.e. for a serious offense against general security, for which the penalty for intent is from two to 12 years, for which the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Nis is responsible, while for the criminal offense of one to for eight years, the competent Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Aleksinac”, emphasized Stojanović.

He said that on behalf of all eight families of the injured miners, they will submit a lawsuit to the court in Aleksinac for compensation of damages due to the mental pain suffered due to the loss of a loved one.

“I believe that the conditions have been created for addressing the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg because Article Six of the European Convention on the Principle of Fair Trial has been violated.” However, in order to appeal to the European Court, we first need to appeal to the Constitutional Court of our country,” said Stojanović.

In the second half of January of this year, the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Aleksinac rejected the criminal complaint of Zorana Mihajlović, former Vice President of VladevSrbija and Minister of Mining and Energy, for the criminal offense of serious crime against general security against 14 people.

Stojanović filed an objection to the decision of the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Aleksinac to reject the Ministry’s criminal complaint on January 31, and at the end of March, the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office rejected that objection.

So far, the Prosecutor’s Office has rejected applications to initiate criminal proceedings three times, with the explanation that “there are no grounds for suspicion that a criminal offense has been committed, for which it is being prosecuted ex officio”.

The miners Darko Zlatković (43), Nenad Trivunac (37), Petar Petrović (31), Radovan Grujić (47), Branko Čokorilo (57), Branislav Zlatanović (54), Bratislav Živković (59) died in the accident in the “Soko” mine. ) and Bojan Stajić (34), and 20 miners were injured.