Kosovo: Murder of journalist uninivestigated for 19 years

On the evening of September 21, 1999, they responded to the call. A side door was opened, on a bedroom floor they found killed Momir Stokuca, a photo reporter and an associate of Politika (daily newspaper).

Since then, the police have not dealt with this murder. There was never any investigation launched.

An investigation by the Journalists' Association of Serbia (UNS) also reveals that this report of the UNMIK police "disappeared" from their archives, which is justified by "change of duty and dislocation". There is no information about this murder in EULEX either, nor in the Special Prosecutor's Office of Kosovo, or in the Serbian Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor. Despite the UNS reminiscent of this crime for years, any investigative judge has never called the closest relative, Momir's sister Branka Damnjanovic, for 19 years since her brother was killed.

"You journalists are the only ones to remember him," she says in a testimony for UNS.

Time of death

- Moma was 50 years old, he was not married and he lived with our mother in the neighborhood called Peyton Place. I was living in the pedestrian zone of Pristina. Upon the arrival of international forces, in June 1999, we remained in the city because we did not do anything wrong to anyone. We did not go out, but our neighbors helped us. When people with rifles would break out in front of the entrance yelling: Are there Serbian pigs in the building? They would answer, no, pass on. However, at the end of August my mother got sick and we had to leave Pristina. Moma did not want to go. No one will expel me, I will not leave, the international community has arrived and it will all be solved, he repeated continuously. We called him from Nis every day, but he did not talk...