Acquittal for the alleged murderer of a journalist in Serbia – protests in Belgrade Controversial President Bukele declares himself the winner of the elections in El Salvador

The way in which the Serbian judiciary handles the murder of dissident journalist and newspaper editor Slavko Curuvija in 1999 is once again stirring up people in Serbia.

On Monday, hundreds of people demonstrated in Belgrade in front of the Court of Appeal after a call from several Serbian journalists’ associations. The court acquitted four people suspected of involvement in the murder, after previously sentencing them to decades in prison.

Curuvija was shot dead in front of his apartment in Belgrade on April 11, 1999. Three weeks earlier, NATO had launched a bombing campaign against what was then Yugoslavia to stop Serbian security forces in Kosovo. Curuvija had condemned the actions of then Yugoslav President and warlord Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo. In the 1990s he founded the first private daily newspaper in Serbia since the communist era. Curuvija was long considered a confidant of Milosevic’s leadership, until a rift over the Kosovo issue.

The trial began in 2015. In its indictment, the Public Prosecution Service stated: “Curuvija had to die so that the (Milosevic) regime could continue.” In December 2021, a court in Belgrade sentenced four men – not legally –: 30 years in prison each for former Serbian intelligence chief Rade Markovic and one of his subordinates for incitement to murder and 20 years in prison each for the two alleged murderers. Last Friday, the Court of Appeal announced the acquittal of all four men. According to Serbian media, the judgment in question was handed down in March 2023.

Milosevic was overthrown in a popular uprising the year after the NATO intervention. He died in 2006 as a prisoner of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. (dabbing/sda/dpa)