The Appellate Court in Belgrade announced today the verdict passed almost ten months ago, according to which Radomir Marković, Milan Radonjić, Miroslav Kurak and Ratko Romić were accused of the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija and acquitted, it was announced on the website of the Appellate Court.
The court, by accepting the appeals of the defense and partially accepting the appeal of the Prosecutor's Office, changed the first-instance verdict and acquitted the defendant Marković of having committed the criminal offense of aggravated murder in incitement, and the defendants Milan Radonjić, Miroslav Kurak and Ratko Romić of having, as co-perpetrators, committed the criminal offense felony murder.
According to reports, the Court of Appeals, after the panel session, decided to open a hearing before the second-instance court, as reported by Insider, because it was shown based on the appeals that the first-instance court committed significant violations of the provisions of the criminal procedure in the repeated proceedings, which made it impossible to to examine the regularity and legality of the disputed verdict, and he also did not act according to the order of the second-instance court and did not eliminate the irregularities that were pointed out by the earlier decision of the Court of Appeal.
It is added that the first-instance court, with the verdict contested by the appeals, "exceeded the charge, violated the identity of the charge and the verdict and did not resolve the subject of the charge, and at the same time, with a selective evaluation of the evidence, completely ignored certain facts arising from the evidence presented, which, viewed together, provide a basis for a different ruling.
According to the assessment of the Appellate Court, despite all the presented evidence, the existence of an organized criminal group was not established during the proceedings, nor was it established who, when and where, as stated in the indictment, participated in making the previous agreement and plan to take the life of the owner, the director-in-chief and editor-in-chief of the daily "Dnevni telegraf" and the weekly "Evropljanin" Slavko Ćuruvija, and no evidence was presented in support of the allegations of the prosecution, that such an order was given by an unknown person "from the highest government structures".
In March 2023, the main hearing was held before the Court of Appeals, where the verdict for the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija passed in December 2021 was decided.
Prpa: The murderer is the state, it is very difficult for it to accuse itself
After the decision of the Court of Appeal acquitting those accused of murdering Ćuruvija, his former partner Branka Prpa tells Nova.rs that this was a "disastrous decision" and that the state of Serbia covered up the case all along.
The unmarried wife of Ćuruvija tells Nova.rs that everything from the beginning "was a farce".
"The whole court process was a farce. You had two judgments that you are examining and overturning for the third time. So what is it? It is the disingenuous intention of the regime from the very beginning to not solve this case. How else should we read. It is the state that covers up, that does not want the murdered man to get satisfaction because the murderer is the state. Therefore, the state security service participated in that," says Prpa.
She recalls that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić at the beginning of his term "swore that he would solve the murder" and notes that she never believed him.
"It is very difficult for the state to accuse itself. As you can see, they played it to the end, really in a way that is eyeless, amoral," concludes Prpa.
Bonus video:
