Today marks the 31st anniversary of the tragic death of journalist Radislava Dada Vujasinović in her apartment in New Belgrade. The initial investigation showed that the journalist killed herself, but the public does not believe that version of events. No one was held accountable for the death of Dada Vujasinović, and apparently they won’t be, because last year the absolute statute of limitations for criminal prosecution for murder came into effect.
After Radislava Dada Vujasinović was found dead on April 9, the police conducted an investigation without the presence of the duty judge who subsequently informed the public that it was a suicide, which few believe.
And why? First of all, because of a whole series of inconsistencies in the investigation, which has been disputed several times.
The fingerprints from the hunting rifle, with which the alleged suicide was carried out, were never collected, and there is no record of the evidence that was in the apartment at the time of the incident, which was subsequently removed.
The investigating officers were not at all suspicious of what they found at the scene, from the position of the body and weapons, to the wound that Dada allegedly inflicted on herself with a hunting rifle, the fallen chandelier, a strand of her hair found on the couch, the position of the blood-soaked armchair in which she was sitting when she allegedly committed suicide – to the fact that there were traces of two different blood groups on the armchair. Her clothes were gone, as is the lead shot that was removed from her body during the autopsy.
Dada’s parents nevertheless launched a private investigation, which, unlike the official one, showed that the journalist was murdered, but the prosecution rejected the evidence that pointed to it.
In 2008, renowned ballistician Vladimir Kostićreokret conducted a series of expert examinations and concluded that Dada was killed. On May 30, he submitted his findings to the court, in which it is also stated that two felt plugs (bullet fragments) were found in the body of the deceased, which means that Dad was shot twice, which excludes suicide.
After this finding, the District Public Prosecutor in Belgrade finally initiated pre-trial proceedings at the end of January 2009, ordered to check all the evidence from the case and to hear the experts.
Nine years ago, the Dutch Forensic Institute came to the conclusion that the cause of death could be murder, suicide or an accident. After that, there was no progress towards the resolution of this case, and last year the absolute statute of limitations for the criminal prosecution for murder began.
Dada Vujasinović was born on February 10, 1964 in Capljina. She graduated from the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, at the Department of Yugoslav Literature and Serbo-Croatian Language in 1987.
She started her journalistic career at Privredni pregled, and later wrote feature articles for the newspaper Duga, where she became a member of the editorial board in 1993.
In addition to investigative articles, she also wrote reports on war events in Yugoslavia and political events in Serbia.
For reports from the battlefield, she received the UNS “Svetozar Marković” award.
