Montenegro Prosecutor Demands Sex Claim Newspaper Ban

Supreme State Prosecutor Veselin Vuckovic sent a request for a ban to the Basic Court in Podgorica on Thursday after the newspaper published a series of articles attacking Calovic, including one accusing her of bestiality.

"The prosecution submitted a proposal to the Basic Court to ban the distribution of Informer for the violation of the guaranteed freedoms of the citizen [Calovic]," the court's spokeswoman Ivana Becic told BIRN.

Last week Informer released a video recording which it said offered “proof that Calovic is an animal abuser”, alleging that the director of the prominent MANS NGO had sexual relations with her two dogs.

The Belgrade-based paper published front-page stories in both Serbia and Montenegro asking readers to "investigate" whether it was Calovic in the video.

MANS is an influential NGO in Montenegro and its work on corruption, organized crime and the misuse of state funds has brought it into conflict with the government, which accuses it of political bias.

The NGO has particularly angered the authorities in recent months by publishing several reports and audio recordings which it claimed provide proof of serious wrongdoing by Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic’s governing Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS.

In a speech in parliament on Wednesday, Prime Minister Djukanovic did not condemn Informer but instead said that the authorities should investigate whether the alleged sex tape was authentic or not.

Djukanovic called on Calovic to "tell the public" whether she appears in the footage.

"It's really hypocritical to talk of an Informer problem. What we should be talking about is the state of media professionalism in Montenegro in general, because Informer hasn't fallen...