CRIME WITHOUT PUNISHMENT: 27 years since the murder of journalist Slavko Ćuruvija, the killers are still at large!

On this day in 1999, Slavko Ćuruvija, a journalist and owner of “Dnevni telegraf” and “Evropljanin,” was murdered. The Court of Appeal in Belgrade has legally acquitted four former State Security employees of charges for participating in the murder.

Slavko Ćuruvija was killed on April 11, 1999, during the NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in the entrance of the building where he lived in the center of Belgrade. The killers fired 17 bullets into Ćuruvija from behind.

In February 2024, it was announced that the Court of Appeal in Belgrade had legally acquitted four former State Security employees of charges for participating in his murder.

In the absence of direct and indirect evidence that would reliably confirm that Radomir Marković, Milan Radonjić, Miroslav Kurak, and Ratko Romić were the perpetrators of this criminal act, the Court of Appeal found that the prosecution’s allegations were not proven in an indubitable manner.

By accepting the defense’s appeals and partially accepting the Prosecution’s appeal, the Court of Appeal overturned the first-instance verdict by acquitting Marković of the charge of committing the criminal act of aggravated murder by incitement, and Radonjić, Kurak, and Romić of committing the criminal act of aggravated murder as co-perpetrators, while the injured parties were referred to civil proceedings to realize their property-legal claims.

“The fact that Ćuruvija was a critic of the then-current government is not disputed by this Court, but given that an acquittal was passed regarding the defendants, the Court could not delve into the motives for committing this criminal act,” the Court of Appeal stated in a press release at the time.

The second-instance court examined witnesses that the first-instance court did not, but some of them only testified about information they had heard from someone else; thus, this court concluded that the statements of certain witnesses from the investigation were not only unreliable but also could not be accepted as true with certainty.

The “Slavko Ćuruvija” Foundation stated at the time that it was shocked by the Court of Appeal’s decision to acquit former members of the State Security Service accused of Ćuruvija’s murder and pointed out that such a verdict deeply disturbed his family, friends, colleagues, and admirers.

What was established by the Supreme Court ruling

In the procedure for the protection of legality, the Supreme Court partially accepted the request of the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office, establishing that in the acquittal for the murder of Ćuruvija, certain very important pieces of evidence were not correctly evaluated.

The Court of Appeal, according to the Supreme Court, presented some “completely unclear” or “contradictory” conclusions that are not in accordance with the statements of some of the prosecution’s most important witnesses, nor with key material evidence, such as the analysis of data from mobile phone base stations regarding the calls the defendants made immediately before and after Ćuruvija’s murder.

In January of this year, the “Slavko Ćuruvija” Foundation welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling but also reminded that it cannot change the horrific fact that those responsible for the journalist’s murder, even after nearly 27 years, have not been convicted of that crime.

According to the foundation, a court case is also underway following a lawsuit by Radonjić, Romić, and Kurak against the “Slavko Ćuruvija” Foundation, claiming that its statement regarding the verdict damaged their honor and reputation.

Biography of Slavko Ćuruvija

Slavko Ćuruvija was born in Zagreb on August 9, 1949. He graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade.

From 1986, he worked for the newspaper Borba. He started as a commentator and then progressed through editor of the internal political section to the position of editor-in-chief.

In 1994, together with Momčilo Đorgović, he founded the newspaper Nedeljni telegraf, and two years after that, the two of them founded Dnevni telegraf.

Slavko Ćuruvija was killed while he was the editor and owner of the magazine Evropljanin, which he founded in 1998.

Today, a street in Belgrade bears the name of Slavko Ćuruvija, and a memorial plaque is located at the site where he was murdered.