Everything was in order the last time police checked on Milos Medenica, at 5.30 p.m. on January 27. The 39-year-old son of Montenegro’s former top judge was at the address he had been confined to since October 18 last year.
The next morning, the High Court in Podgorica sentenced him to 10 years and two months in prison for organised crime offences, smuggling, unlawful influence, and obstruction of justice.
Medenica was not present, as was his right. But by the time police turned up at his door following sentencing, he was no longer at home either.
A week later, Lidija Mitrovic, a former special state prosecutor, failed to report for the start of a seven-month prison sentence for abuse of office. She too went on the run.
That two such high-profile convicts could simply walk away is a major embarrassment for Montenegro’s law and order bodies just as the country tries to convince the European Union it is getting on top of the organised crime and corruption that flourished in the decades following the collapse of federal Yugoslavia.