The trial of the accused for the murder of journalist Slavko Ćuruvija continued today in the Special Court in Belgrade with the testimony of the director of Studio B in 1999, Dragan Kojadinović, who pointed to the various and numerous pressures of the then government on independent media.
Kojadinović said that Ćuruvija, as well as its editorial staff, were exposed to those pressures through the imposition of high fines.
Kojadinović also said that Studio B was the first to announce that Ćuruvija had been killed and that it was reported to the editorial phone by a citizen.
"Someone from the studio brought it to me through the door (in the newsroom) and I called journalist Vlado Dinić, the owner of the newspaper Svedok, to check because he was on the street," he said.
Kojadinović said that Dinić went to Svetogorska street and that he "found Ćuruvija's body covered in blood in the entrance."
"He told me that and I then published the news," Kojadinović said.
He said that one of the following days, Dinić told him that he found only two small Roma at the scene of the murder.
"He stated that the gypsies said that those who shot fled to Komercijalna banka, and at that time it was said that DB used that bank," said Kojadinović.
He also added that in later conversations, Dinić was surprised that he found only the body of Ćuruvija in the haustor and that there were no people.
He also said that he called Dinić to check whether Ćuruvija had been killed because the Svedok newsroom was near Svetogradska street at the time and that after "five, six minutes Dinić told him that he saw Ćuruvija in a pool of blood".
Kojadinović added that after he published the news, Danica Drašković also called him, who said that Ćuruvija had been killed.
He explained that Branka Prpa, who was with Ćuruvija at the scene of the murder, conveyed this to Danica Drašković.
Kojadinović also said that he thinks that Ćuruvija was killed "on someone's whim", explaining that during the state of war, any of those who were not at the will of the authorities could have been assigned to a field outside Belgrade and their media shut down.
He said that the editors of other media also called him with the question "have you heard that Ćuruvija was killed, what are you going to do..." and added that they only published the news about Ćuruvija's murder later.
He did not specify which media and editors they were talking about, but he asked in court why he and Dinić, who had done their work professionally, were called to testify, and not those who did not immediately announce that Ćuruvija had been killed and were wondering why they had not done so.
Before Kojadinović, retired DB official Miloš Teodorović testified, who since 1994 was the head of the DB Commission, which was in charge of destroying documents.
He said that he was also at the head of that commission after the October 2000th changes, in XNUMX, when Goran Petrović was in charge of the DB department.
Teodorović also said that there was no illegal destruction of DB documents and that the Komsi that he managed "did not destroy a single document" from the "Ćuruvija" file.
Teodorović, the first defense witness in the trial, who was the head of the fifth DB administration, also said that after the publication of the "Ćuran" file in the media, he took the complete documentation from that administration to a "safe place".
"I did it on my own initiative because I was personally in charge of the Fifth Administration and I didn't want another "Curan" to happen to me," he said, explaining that he made the decision on his own and only informed his superior about it.
According to him, the documentation was transferred to Banjica, where the DB headquarters was located.
The legal representative of the Ćuruvi family, lawyer Slobodan Ružić, said in a statement to journalists in front of the Special Court that Kojadinović's testimony was significant because it reminded of the atmosphere in which independent journalists worked during the rule of Slobodan Milošević.
"Everyone has somewhat forgotten the atmosphere that prevailed then," Ružić said.
The defendants' lawyer, Zora Dobričanin Nikodinović, said that the part of Kojadinović's testimony related to the discovery of Ćuruvija's body was important for the defense.
She also said that Teodorović's testimony regarding the destruction of DB documents was very significant and assessed that this witness "put an end to almost twenty years of media spin" about the destruction of documents.
Ćuruvija was killed on April 11, 1999, in Svetogorska street in Belgrade, in the haustor of the building where he lived.
The head of the State Security (DB) Radomir Marković, the head of the Belgrade center of the DB Milan Radonjić, the former chief inspector of the Second Directorate of the DB Ratko Romić and a member of the reserve staff of the DB Miroslav Kurak are accused of his murder.
According to the indictment, Ćuruvija was killed by Kurak, who is on the run, and his accomplice was Romić, who, like Radonjić, was arrested in January 2014.
During the previous hearings, the defendants denied any connection with that crime.
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