The indictment for the murder of Ćuruvija was filed 15 years after the crime

The Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime filed an indictment against the suspects for the murder of journalist and owner of the newspaper "Dnevni Telegraf" Slavko Ćuruvija on April 11, 1999, Serbian media reported.

For now, it is not known who is on the indictment, but the investigation was conducted against the then head of the Department of the DB Radomir Marković, the head of the Belgrade center of the DB Milan Radonjić, and members of the DB Ratko Romić and Miroslav Kurak.

Radonjić and Romić are in custody, Marković is in prison in Požarevac serving a 40-year prison sentence, and Kurak is not available to judicial authorities and an international warrant has been issued for him.

The key witness in this investigation, after whose testimony the accused were arrested on January 13 of this year, is a former member of the DB, i.e. commander of the special operations unit Milorad Ulemek Legija.

On his own initiative, unconditionally, on January 8, Ulemek gave a statement to the prosecutor's office in which he detailed his knowledge about that liquidation.

Ćuruvija was killed on Easter, April 11, 1999, during the NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia.

The murder was committed around 17:35 p.m. in Belgrade, in Svetogorska Street (at that time Iva Lola Ribara), in the passage in front of number XNUMX, where the premises of the marketing department of "Dnevni telegrafa" were located, and on the fourth floor the apartment where Ćuruvija lived .

The killers fired 17 bullets into Ćuruvij, and then "certified" him with one shot to the head.

His unmarried wife, the historian Branka Prpa, was with him at the time, who testified in the investigation during which more than a dozen witnesses were heard.

At the time of Ćuruvija's murder, the SPS, JUL and SRS coalition was in power in Serbia.

Radomir Marković was arrested in February 2001. He was sentenced to a maximum prison sentence of 40 years for the murder of Ivan Stambolić on August 25, 2000 and four members of the SPO in the assassination of the leader of the SPO - Vuk Drašković on the Ibar highway on October 3, 1999.

Radonjić and Romić are on trial in the High Court in Belgrade for assisting in the attempted murder of Drašković in Budva in 2000.

In the first instance, they were sentenced to eight and seven years in prison, but that verdict was overturned and their retrial is underway.

Prolonged detention of the accused for murder

Since the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime filed an indictment for the murder of Ćuruvija, the Special Department for Organized Crime of the High Court in Belgrade extended the detention of suspects Romić and

Radonjić, the High Court announced today.

According to reports, the detention of Romić and Radonjić was extended until the court's decision, and at the latest for another 30 days, so that they would not be able to influence the accomplices to destroy the evidence of the crime, as well as because they were threatened with a sentence of more than ten years in prison. .

NUNS welcomed the indictment

The Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS) expressed today its satisfaction with the filing of an indictment for the murder of journalist and owner of the newspaper "Dnevni Telegraf" Slavko Ćuruvija.

"The NUNS expects that in the process of proving the indictment, the perpetrators of that serious crime will also be found, the elucidation of which has been a major test for the very slow democratic maturation of Serbian society for a decade and a half," the NUNS statement reads.

It is added that the indictment for the murder of Ćuruvija should serve as an additional incentive to shed light on the murders of Dada Vujasinović in 1994 and Milan Pantić, who was murdered in 2001.

"Justice cannot and must not remain only partially satisfied, and that is why it is up to the investigative and judicial authorities to do everything in order to bring the perpetrators and political sponsors of all murders of journalists to justice. As long as these crimes are not fully elucidated and prosecuted, freedom information in Serbia remains in the shadow of pressures, threats and physical threats to the media and journalists", announced NUNS.