On the 9th of July this year, a farmer from Ljubljana, Anton Čemažar, was brutally beaten by three Roma men in his field. Their “logistician”, the driver who brought them to the field, will walk free. The District Court in Ljubljana was not interested in the fact that he had decisively contributed to the violent act. In their view, this is not enough to constitute complicity.
The attack took place in Kleče, where 72-year-old Čemažar has a field. As he told the media outlet Planet TV a month ago, he wanted to check how the potatoes were doing in his field at around 7 p.m., and managed to pull some weeds when he noticed that a car had pulled up in the vicinity. The thugs then got out of the car, one of them knocked him to the ground and then punched him twice in the head. The other sprayed him with tear gas. After the attack, they jumped back into the car and quickly drove away.
Despite his serious injuries, the man managed to drive himself home. His face was badly swollen, he could not see anything from his left eye and he was severely bruised and bloodied. When his family saw him, they immediately took him to the emergency room because of his serious injuries.
New details of the attack
Today, it is known that Čemažar was attacked by Primož Strojan, Aleksander Strojan and Stanko Železnik. Among the attackers was also the 37-year-old Boštjan Brajdič, who remained in the car during the attack. According to the media outlet Domovina, Čemažar was first attacked by Aleksander Strojan and then sprayed with tear gas by Primož Strojan. Čemažar was then approached by Stanko Železnik, who repeatedly kicked him in the buttocks and back. Together, the three assailants then ran to the car, and Brajdič drove them away from the crime scene – and the court found Brajdič not guilty of anything.
How the court cleared the driver of the attackers
According to Domovina, Brajdič defended himself in court by remaining silent in the face of the investigating judge’s questions. He only answered the questions of his defence lawyer, where he said what was already known – that he did not get out of the car during the attack. As the investigating judge did not agree with Brajdič’s investigation, and as the charges against him were not sufficiently specific in her opinion, she asked for the opinion of the Extraordinary Chamber. The Chamber agreed with her. They explained their decision as follows: “An offence of accessory after the fact is committed when two or more persons jointly commit a criminal offence by participating in its commission or by contributing to its commission by some other act. This requires that a person be regarded as an accomplice if he or she was aware that he or she was participating with others in the commission of the offence and regarded the offence as his or her own.” The opinion then goes on to state that “the Chamber agrees with the investigating judge that the above allegation against Boštjan Brajdič, i.e. that he was merely driving the car in which the perpetrators who beat the victim were present, in the absence of any other circumstance indicating that there was joint action by the suspect Brajdič with the occupants of the vehicle and that Brajdič thus regarded the act as his own, is insufficient to constitute an allegation of accomplice liability.”
Chamber President Tina Lesar, in the style of “it can’t be true, but it is”, claims that the evidence does not show that Brajdič and the other attackers had agreed on the attack, and the judge wrote in her unusual verdict that the attackers were returning home to Roje from fishing. It seems completely unbelievable that Brajdič did not know about the attack, after all, he did not even try to prevent the attackers from violently attacking the assaulted Čemažar. As far as the court could see, he had somehow found himself in the middle of the action, without a trace of guilt, and the attack on the farmer had apparently taken him by surprise as well.
Responses to the court’s decision
Filip Čemažar, the son of the attacked farmer, responded to the court’s decision. His is, of course, an outraged reaction, and he describes the court’s decision as unbelievable. “I can’t believe it. The court throws out the charges against the man who brought the perpetrators to the location where my father was beaten. He was left almost unconscious in a field, the same man took the perpetrators away, and he is innocent? The court believes the nonsense that someone bought a car to go fishing in. The car was not registered, and, by the way, you go fishing early in the morning. And do they have a fishing licence? Why did they have tear gas in the car?” he wonders, adding that the courts are Slovenia’s problem. He describes them as a “miscarriage of justice”. “The police do their job, and the courts throw it all away. How is it possible that this is happening? The perpetrator defends himself with silence, and the court has to prove he is guilty. Instead of the perpetrator having to prove his innocence. There were no witnesses to the beating. The consequences were visible. And the court believes the perpetrator more than the victim. A miscarriage of justice,” he writes.
Klemen Golob, the victim’s lawyer, also responded to the journalists’ questions and said that he was disappointed by the court’s decision. “It is clear from the reasoning of the decision that the undisputed fact that this suspect drove a private vehicle to and from the scene of the brutal attack is not sufficient for criminal prosecution, which is absurd. I am afraid that such decisions only deepen the lack of confidence of the citizens of the Republic of Slovenia in the (legal) security and legal protection in the Republic of Slovenia,” he commented on the ruling.
C. K.
