CAT/C/35/D/174/2000 Page 4 one double-wire of around 2.5 meters length each were tied to the socket box – probably the missing ends that had been torn from the cables tied to the radiator. Lastly, the report states that the investigating judge ordered the police to interview all witnesses of the incident. 2.6 On 22 April 1994, the deputy public prosecutor advised the complainants that he considered that their son’s death had been caused by an accident and that, accordingly, no criminal investigation would be initiated. 2.7 On 18 July 1994, the complainants brought charges of murder against unknown perpetrators, asking for a criminal investigation to be initiated by the Belgrade public prosecutor’s office. They claimed that the police clubbed their son with a blunt metal object, thereby causing his death, and subsequently threw his corpse out of the window to conceal the act. On 12 August and on 5 December 1994, the deputy public prosecutor informed the complainants that no sufficient grounds existed for instituting criminal proceedings, and advised them to file a criminal report with the public prosecutor’s office, submitting the evidence on which their suspicion was based. 2.8 In the meantime, the investigating judge had requested a commission of medical experts of the Belgrade Institute of Forensic Medicine, composed of the same doctors who had conducted the autopsy, to prepare an expert opinion on the death of N. N. In their report dated 22 November 1994, the experts concluded on the basis of the autopsy report, as well as other documents, that the location, distribution and types of injuries observed on N. N. indicated that they were the result of the fall of his body from a considerable height on a wide, flat concrete surface. The “signs of the injury reactions (inhalation of blood and […] bruises around the wounds and torn tissues)” indicated that N. N. was alive at the moment when he incurred the injuries. 2.9 On 13 and 24 January 1995, the complainants challenged inconsistencies in the medical findings of the expert commission, as well as in the autopsy report, and requested the Belgrade District Court to order another forensic expertise from a different institution at their expense. 2.10 On 27 June 1995, the complainants sought the intervention of the Public Prosecutor of the Republic, who, by reference to the forensic expertise of the expert commission, affirmed the position of the deputy public prosecutor. Similarly, the Deputy Federal Public Prosecutor, by letter of 8 January 1996, advised the complainants that there were no grounds for him to intervene. 2.11 At the complainants’ request, Dr. Z. S., a pathologist from the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the Belgrade Military Hospital, evaluated the autopsy report of 19 April 1994 and the expert commission’s forensic findings of 22 November 1994. In a letter of 21 March 1996, he informed the complainants that, although the described injuries could be the result of the fall of the body of the deceased from a considerable height, it could not be excluded that some of the injuries had been inflicted prior to the fall. He criticized (a) that the autopsy had been carried out six days after the death of N. N.; (b) that the reports did not describe any decomposition changes of the body; (c) that the autopsy report stated that the brain membranes and brain tissue of the deceased were intact, while at the same time noting the presence of

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