Montenegro Probes Leaked Police Threat to Church Protesters

Montenegro's General Prosecutors Office has launched an investigation into the leak of a telephone conversation between what appeared to be two senior police officers on January 6, in which one said Serbian Orthodox Church believers rallying over Christmas would "get their asses kicked if they make trouble during the church gathering".

The discussion between what appeared to be the voices of Zoran Lazovic, the assistant director of police in charge of organised crime, and Dusko Golubovic, a senior police officer, was published on the news website IN4S. It referenced Serbian Orthodox Christmas on January 6, and the regular mass protests of Church followers and opposition parties against a new law on religion that they say could be used to target Church assets.

Prosecution spokeswoman Milica Mandic told the daily Vijesti that prosecutors had formed a case, while the daily Pobjeda said that the Electronic Communications and Postal Services Agenc, EKIP, had started collecting information about the wiretapping.

IN4S posted the audio recording of the phone conversation on January 30. Both Lazovic and Golubovic did not comment on it.

Orthodox believers in Montenegro gather outdoors at Christmas to burn traditional Yule logs. These gatherings highlight the rivalry in Montenegro between the Serbian Orthodox Church and its much smaller canonically unrecognised rival, the Montenegrin Orthodox Church.

But this year the main concern of the authorities was that they might add to public discontent over the hotly disputed religion law, which the national parliament adopted on December 27.

Lazovic and Golubovic were forced to quit Montenegro's National Security Agency in 2015 following years of media speculation about alleged...