Milica StojanovicBelgradeBIRNDecember 5, 202218:46Four former Serbian State Security Service officers are appealing after being convicted for a second time, after a retrial, of involvement in the murder of opposition journalist and editor Slavko Curuvija.
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The Appeals Court in Belgrade. Photo: BIRN.
Four former Serbian State Security Service officers launched challenges on Monday at the Appeals Court in Belgrade to last year’s verdict convicting them of involvement in the murder of journalist and editor Slavko Curuvija.
Curuvija was shot in front of his home in Belgrade in April 1999 during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, allegedly because of his outspoken criticism of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
In the second first-instance verdict in December 2021, the former head of Serbian State Security, Radomir Markovic, and security service officer Milan Radonjic were each sentenced to 30 years in prison, while secret service agents Ratko Romic and Miroslav Kurak were each given 20 years in prison.
The court found that Markovic told Radonjic of the plan to assassinate the journalist, and Radonjic made an agreement with Romic and Kurak to kill Curuvija.
On the first day of five scheduled days of hearings, judge Vesna Petrovic talked through the first-instance verdict.
The prosecution called for a full retrial at the Court of Appeals and an increase in the men’s sentences.
In September 2020, Belgrade Court of Appeals overturned the initial judgment that convicted four Serbian State Security officers of involvement in the Curuvija assassination.
The 2019 first-instance verdict verdict was quashed “due to significant violations of the provisions of the criminal procedure”.
The appeals decision said that the court that tried the men added facts to the charges that were not in the original indictment, and so the defendants were found guilty of some violations “which were not contained in the indictment and about which no evidence was presented during the proceedings”.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
