Despair took on a new dimension. In the cell of Padinska Skela Prison three convicts, slobbery villains - two 20-year-olds, one 21-year-old - for days they sadistically tortured, humiliated, raped and finally killed seventy-four-year-old Stanimir B, a pensioner. This kind of horror from hell does not even belong in the worst nightmares.
Stanimira B. was not protected by anyone. No one helped him. Nobody even looked at him. He ended his life in the presence of the authorities, gruesomely and unspeakably crushed - physically and mentally. He didn't have thirty thousand dinars for the fine for throwing a firecracker from the balcony on New Year's Eve, so he got thirty days in prison. And there, three piranhas from the list of basic humanity awaited him in the cell.
Padinjak is not a prison for the most serious criminals. On the contrary, he receives people convicted of minor crimes, as well as people like Stanimir B. His torturers and murderers are, in all likelihood, ordinary scumbags, petty criminals and cowards. Extorting money for the prison canteen by torturing a pensioner who never had a misdemeanor charge in his life was just an excuse, a kind of self-justification for the atrocity. They continued even when Stanimir B. ran out of money.
Why? Because the sadistic torture of an old and infirm man gave them a sense of power; because in this way they gained a "prison reputation"; because they simply could. And most importantly - because they followed the spirit of the times in which the weak, disenfranchised and poor pay the bill for the inaction of the unscrupulous, unscrupulous and bestial. For the Jajars from Padinjak, unimaginable brutality and sadism was a way to join the so-called "elite", even if behind bars. The fate of Stanimir B. is therefore a mirror image of the society in which he lived and of all of us.
But how is it possible that none of the guards heard or saw anything, not a single prisoner reported it or an informant reported it? The condition of Stanimir B. told everyone everything. Only during the autopsy, when it was too late, was it established what he suffered and how he was killed.
And where does the initiation of disciplinary proceedings against seven guards and the transfer of manager Padinjak to a lower position lead? Are they so necessary to convince capillary voters that they can get by with a 20 percent reduction in wages so that the regime, as in every election, will again get up to 90 percent of the votes in prisons? Is this the reason for the absence of criminal charges and systematic investigations? Or maybe the fear that the public will gain even a partial insight into the scale of corruption and lawlessness?
There are many questions here, but there is only one right. It reads - where do we live?
