Former security chief indicted for journalist’s murder

BELGRADE - Serbia's Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime has filed an indictment against four members of the former State Security Service (DB) on suspicion of their acting “out of base motives” to kill Slavko Curuvija, journalist and owner of ‘Dnevni telegraf’, a short-lived daily published in Belgrade, on April 11, 1999.

The four are Radomir Markovic, former head of Serbia's DB, Milan Radonjic, head of the DB Belgrade department, Ratko Romic, chief intelligence inspector in the 2nd DB Administration and Miroslav Kurak, member of the 2nd Administration's reserve, Serbia’s prosecutor for organized crime Miljko Radisavljevic told Tanjug on Friday.

The four men are accused of aggravated murder.

Markovic is charged with incitement to murder and the others were indicted as aides, said the prosecutor.

Based on the evidence gathered during the investigation and the evidence gathered by the investigating judge in a previous trial, the Prosecutor's Office concluded that there was reasonable doubt that Markovic, Radonjic, Romic and Kurak acted out of base motives and killed Slavko Curuvija.

The murder took place in front of the building serving as the premises of the ‘Dnevni telegraf’ marketing service, on Orthodox Easter 1999, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

It was proposed that Kurak be tried in absentia, and the court ordered the extension of detention for Romic and Radonjic to 30 days, the prosecutor said.

Radisavljevic said that an indictment review process would follow and that he expected the main trial would be scheduled within 30 days.

Radonjic and Romic are in detention, Markovic is serving a 40-year prison sentence in Pozarevac, while Kurak remains at...