The trial of the accused for the murder of journalist Slavko Ćuruvija continued today in the Special Court in Belgrade with the testimony of Zlatko Kesić, a member of the "Poskok" unit, who investigated the crime after the October 2000th XNUMX changes.
Kesić said that members of the police tried to take statements from members of the State Security (DB) who followed Ćuruvija, but they were not allowed to do so.
"They sent written statements and that was the end of it," said Kesić, adding, when asked by the deputy prosecutor, that he had seen the statements but that "God knows nothing could be extracted from them."
He explained that "they (members of the DB) took the statements on their own" and said that he did not learn "anything important" from those statements.
When asked by the lawyers of the accused whether they had obtained information about the perpetrators of the murder, Kesić answered in the negative: "Not even close."
Ljubiša Milanović, a former member of the "Poskok" group, who after the October 2000th changes in XNUMX investigated the assassination attempt on the Ibarska highway, also came to the courtroom as a witness.
Milanović said that he was not specifically in charge of the Ćuruvi case, but that he obtained information "about the possible perpetrators of the murder" of the journalist. He said that this information was officially filed, but that he heard that it then disappeared.
When asked by the defense attorney whether the names of the accused Ratko Romić and Miroslav Kurak were mentioned in that information, Milanović answered in the negative.
He also said that the names of members of the Special Operations Unit (JSO) Zoran Pavković Kiko and "some Bosnian" were listed.
Milanović also said that the information was written with all the details, and along with Pavković, he also named Dejan Žarković as a person who participated in the murder or in the preparation for that crime.
He said that he got this information from Zoran Popović, who, as he stated, died in South America two or three years ago.
Milanović also said that after writing that information, he was dismissed and transferred to the City SUP and that he could not do anything after that.
He also said that he spoke with JSO commander Milorad Ulemek Legija about allowing him to interrogate two JSO members, but that he was dismissed soon after.
"They told me that I disturbed the unit," Milanović said.
The lawyers of the accused and injured parties, in their statements to journalists in front of the Special Court building, presented the opposite position regarding Milanović's testimony.
The defense believes that Milanović's testimony confirms that their clients are not guilty, while the representatives of the Ćuruvija family claim that it is only a matter of diverting attention.
Ćuruvija was killed on Easter, April 11, 1999, in Svetogorska Street, Belgrade, in the haustor of the building where he lived.
The Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime accuses then head of the DB Radomir Marković, head of the Belgrade center of the DB Milan Radonjić, former chief inspector of the Second Directorate of the DB Ratko Romić and member of the reserve staff of the DB Miroslav Kurak for 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.
See more:
Download the app and follow the news
FOLLOW US ON
