Information leaks should be stopped and investigations declared secret, Supreme Court president Djuro Sessa says in Friday's issue of Vecernji List, talking about polemics in the state leadership "of which the judiciary too is a victim."

Sessa told the daily the current discussions on ongoing proceedings and the judicial authority were harmful for a number of reasons.

A trial outside a courtroom harms the integrity of legal proceedings, creating the atmosphere that everything is clear, that the proceedings are not necessary after all, so the public’s court-martial delivers decisions and undermines the authority of the courts, he said.

“I won’t talk about the other components of the judiciary, but as long as the court system keeps being used as a punching bag and as long as the public keeps clinging to criticisims which come from only one side, the perception of the court system won’t be better,” Sessa was quoted as saying.

He said preliminary investigations and the collection of evidence must be secret, while investigations need not be kept secret but the content of the evidence must not be made public.

If we want clear relations, it’s only necessary to stipulate that investigations are secret and that the procedure becomes public during the main hearing, Sessa said.

A judge has to take into account that we live in times when any meeting can be given undue meaning and that their integrity can be brought into question, even unfairly, he said. “That’s our sad reality. They should watch where, when and with whom they show up and in which circumstances.”