Belgrade Appeals Court Starts Trial in Murdered Journalist Case

Former head of Serbian State Security Radomir Markovic repeated to the appeal court that he is not guilty for the 1999 murder of the Serbian journalist and editor Slavko Curuvija.

Markovic claimed that Curuvija was only put under state surveillance "due to his contacts with foreign intelligence agencies …The task of every state security is to establish the nature of these contacts".

Curuvija was shot in front of his home in Belgrade in April 1999 during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, allegedly because of his outspoken criticism of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Marković was brought to the court building from prison, where he is serving a sentence for involvement in the attempted killing of then opposition leader Vuk Draskovic in 1999, when four people died.

Branka Prpa, Curuvija's partner at the time, and who was with him at the moment of his murder, also testified again.

"That murder was an epilogue to the permanent persecution of Slavko Curuvija and it cannot be said that he was 'under [surveillance] measures' because he had contacts with foreign intelligence - he had contacts with journalists, both foreign and domestic," Prpa told the court.

Markovic, security service officer Milan Radonjic and secret service agents Ratko Romic and Miroslav Kurak launched challenges in December 2022 at the Appeals Court in Belgrade to the 2021 verdict convicting them of involvement in the murder of the prominent journalist and editor.

In the second first-instance verdict in December 2021, Markovic and Radonjic were each sentenced to 30 years in prison for the crime, while Romic and Kurak were each given 20 years in prison.

The court found that Markovic told Radonjic of the plan to assassinate the journalist, and...