At its thirteenth session, held on 31 October, the Board of Inquiry Charged with Ascertaining the Truth about New-born Babies Abducted from Maternity Wards in Several Serbian Cities conducted a public interview with police officials about investigations carried out under criminal charges filed by parents seeking truth about their children.
Members of the Board of Inquiry interviewed Colonel Srbislav Randjelovic of the Criminal Investigation Police Directorate, Major Dejan Svilar and Major Djuro Karanovic, of the First Section of the Criminal Investigation Police Directorate of the Belgrade City Secretariat of the Interior, and Lieutenant Nebojsa Petkovic and Section Head Zoran Stojanovic, of the Criminal Investigation Police Section of the Nis Secretariat of the Interior.
The police officers explained the procedure applied in case of filings by parents and appropriate public prosecutor’s offices. Special attention was paid to the manner of assigning personal identification numbers to newborn children.
A total of 125 filings were processed in Belgrade, while another 70 were investigated in Nis. The investigations mainly focused on inspection of all pertinent documents, but also on interviews with officials of health care institutions and funeral homes. The interview with the Board of Inquiry also underlined the fact that there were deficiencies in the documentation, mostly at health care institutions, as well as ambiguities in post-mortem examination findings, and lack of burial data; the police officers also remarked that burials were not being performed in the legally approved manner in certain cities.