The President of the Commission for the Investigation of Murders of Journalists, Veran Matic, said he welcomes the ruling of the Supreme Court of Serbia, which found that the law was violated in two of the most important segments of the indictment and during the trial for the murder of journalist Slavko Curuvija. The violations concerned the testimony of a key witness, who, according to the Appeals Court’s acquittal ruling, allegedly contradicted his previous statements during the trial, even though the trial records clearly show the opposite: that he remained consistent with his earlier statements. The same violation of the law was noted concerning the testimonies of four other witnesses.
In its ruling of October 13, 2024, the Supreme Court of Serbia partially accepted the request for the protection of legality filed by the public prosecutor of the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office. The ruling established that the panel of the Appeals Court in Belgrade, Special Department for Organized Crime, composed of Vesna Petrovic, chair of the panel, Nada Hadzi Peric, Dragan Cesarovic, Marko Jocic, and Dusanka Djordjevic, violated the law in its ruling of April 19, 2023, under Article 438, paragraph 2, point 2 of the Criminal Procedure Code, to the benefit of defendants Radomir Markovic, Milan Radonjic, Miroslav Kurak, and Ratko Romic. By doing so, they issued an acquittal contrary to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code for the aforementioned defendants in the criminal proceedings for the murder of journalist and owner of the daily Dnevni Telegraf and the weekly Evropljanin, Slavko Curuvija.
The Supreme Court also determined that the judges violated the law in favor of the defendants by factually misrepresenting decisive facts in the ruling, both regarding key witness testimonies and concerning the “Report on Surveillance and Forensic Analysis and Review of Stored Data on Achieved Telephone Communication” dated February 12, 2012.
This report essentially represents an analysis of mutual communications that took place between April 9 and April 12, 1999, between Milan Radonjic, Ratko Romic, and Miroslav Kurak, whose phone numbers are listed exhaustively, as well as the phone card number of defendant Radomir Markovic, including all data on time, type of traffic, duration, cells, and addresses of base stations through which the communication was established, alongside an analysis of communications based on the unique identification number of the telephone device (IMEI).
This ruling concludes the legal proceedings against the aforementioned defendants, as the Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that the Supreme Court, when it determines there has been a violation of the law, cannot affect the legal validity of the contested decision to the detriment of the defendants.
However, the question remains open as to whether the members of the Appeals Court panel, in issuing the acquittal, merely violated the law or also breached it in a way that could carry criminal liability, Veran Matic said.
“This ruling does not bring satisfaction to anyone. Some defendants have filed multiple lawsuits against those who criticized the ruling, which, as stated in the ruling of the Supreme Court of Serbia, constituted a significant violation of the provisions of the criminal procedure. The family of Slavko Curuvija is owed the truth about the masterminds and killers by the state and the relevant institutions, not just a statement regarding the violation of legality during the acquittal of the accused. Colleagues from Dnevni Telegraf and Evropljanin are owed the full truth about the months-long repression against the media outlet they worked for, against them and their families. Just as the acquittal ruling of the Appealls Panel was not the end of this process, neither should this ruling of the Supreme Court be its conclusion, but rather the beginning of a new phase in establishing accountability for the outcome of the trial and a continuation of the investigation that will determine all the facts about the killers and masterminds,” Matic emphasized.
Source: N1
