The Supreme Court of Serbia, among other things, determined that the judges in the trial for the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija violated the law in favor of the defendants by factually misrepresenting decisive facts in their verdict.
The President of the Commission for the Investigation of Murders of Journalists, Veran Matić, welcomed the ruling of the Supreme Court of Serbia, which established that there had been a violation of the law in two of the most important segments of the indictment and during the trial itself for the murder of journalist Slavko Ćuruvija.
One violation relates to the testimony of a key witness, who, according to the acquittal verdict of the Appellate Panel, allegedly did not stand by his statements during the trial, although the trial records show the exact opposite—that he did stand by his statements.
The same violation of the law was also established in connection with the testimonies of four additional witnesses, N1 reports.
By ruling No. Kzz OK 38-2024 of October 13, 2024, the Supreme Court of Serbia partially upheld the request for the protection of legality submitted by the public prosecutor of the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office, KTŽ 166-24 of September 2, 2024.
That ruling established that the Panel of the Belgrade Court of Appeal, Special Department for Organized Crime, composed of Vesna Petrović, Presiding Judge, Nada Hadži Perić, Dragan Ćesarović, Marko Jocić, and Dušanka Đorđević, by verdict Kž1-Po1 9/22 of April 19, 2023, violated the law within the meaning of Article 438, paragraph 2, item 2 of the Criminal Procedure Code, in favor of the defendants Radomir Marković, Milan Radonjić, Miroslav Kurak, and Ratko Romić, and thus, contrary to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, rendered an acquittal for the aforementioned defendants in the criminal proceedings for the aggravated murder of journalist and owner of the daily newspaper Dnevni telegraf and the weekly Evropljanin, Slavko Ćuruvija.
The Supreme Court of Serbia also found that the aforementioned judges violated the law in favor of the defendants by factually misrepresenting decisive facts in the verdict, both with regard to the testimonies of key witnesses and with regard to the “Report on Re-recording and Forensic Analysis and Review of Stored Data on Established Telephone Communications” dated February 12, 2012.
That report essentially represents an analysis of mutual communications carried out in the period from April 9 to April 12, 1999, between Milan Radonjić, Ratko Romić, and Miroslav Kurak, whose telephone numbers are listed in detail, as well as the telephone card number of defendant Radomir Marković, including all data on time, type of traffic, duration, cells, and base station addresses through which the communications were carried out, as well as an analysis of communications based on the unique identification number of the telephone device (IMEI).
With this ruling, the legal proceedings against the aforementioned defendants have been concluded, as the Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that when the Supreme Court establishes by verdict that there has been a violation of the law, it may not affect the finality of the contested decision to the detriment of the defendants.
However, the question remains open as to whether the members of the Panel of the Special Department of the Court of Appeal, by issuing the acquittal verdict, merely violated the law or also broke it, which could entail criminal liability, said Veran Matić.
“This ruling brings satisfaction to no one. Some of the defendants have filed multiple lawsuits against those who criticized the verdict whose adoption, as stated in the ruling of the Supreme Court of Serbia, constituted a serious violation of the provisions of criminal procedure. The state and competent institutions owe the family of Slavko Ćuruvija the truth about those who ordered and carried out the murder, not merely a finding of violations of legality during the acquittal of the accused. Colleagues from Dnevni telegraf and Evropljanin are owed the full truth about the months-long repression against the media outlet where they worked, against them, and against their families. Just as the acquittal verdict of the Appellate Panel was not the end of this process, neither must this ruling of the Supreme Court be its end, but rather the beginning of a new phase in determining responsibility for the outcome of the trial, as well as the continuation of the investigation that will establish all the facts about the killers and those who ordered the murder,” Matić emphasized.
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Source: Vreme, Foto: Printscreen Youtube