The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has passed a decision by which he ordered the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade to provide a journalist of “Insajder produkcija” of Belgrade with a copy of an official note which contains a statement of reasons for the decision not to investigate the fall of a military helicopter near Belgrade on 13 March 2015.

The Commissioner found that the Prosecutor’s Office had wrongfully rejected the complainant’s request by invoking Article 10 of the Law on Free Access to Information, claiming that “the content of the document is already well-known to the public from previous press coverage” and that “the documentation to which the official note relates is available on the website of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Serbia.” It was also claimed that the information was common knowledge and “had been published many times.” Indeed, even if the document had already been known to the public, i.e. if it had already been published and made available, the government authority concerned would have a duty under Article 10 of the Law to specify in its reply the exact data storage medium where the information can be found and to state where and when the requested document had been published, instead of rejecting the request by a decision. Even more importantly, the complainant had not requested “the documentation to which the official note relates” which was “available on the website of the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Serbia”; she requested a specific document, an official note which contained a statement of reasons for the decision not to investigate the fall of the military helicopter, which had never been made publicly available.

The Commissioner’s decision in this case, just as in all other similar cases, is based on the general principle that citizens, i.e. the public, have an undeniable right to access information about the work of all government authorities, including information about any decisions passed by those authorities based on their discretionary powers. It is the prosecutor’s right to decide whether to prosecute a criminal offence or not; however, since he makes this decision in the capacity of a public office holder, he has a duty to make the reasons for such decision available to the public.