Serbia Told to Compensate Defendants in Journalist’s Murder Case

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled on Tuesday that Serbia violated the rights of Milan Radonjic and Ratko Romic, who are being tried for involvement in the 1999 murder of prominent Serbian journalist Slavko Curuvija.

The ECHR said the men's rights were violated because they were kept in custody for over three years and because it took two years to address their complaint to the Serbian Constitutional Court about their detention.

The court said Serbia should pay the men 1,000 euros each in compensation.

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.

Former Serbian security service officer Radonjic and former security service agent Romic were among four defendants who were convicted in the first-instance trial. A retrial is currently underway.

The ECHR said that the Serbian courts' decision to keep the men in custody for so long "relied on the fact that the crime at issue had shocked, and continued to shock, Serbia and that the applicants' release would provoke very strong public reaction in Serbia and abroad which would prejudice the administration of justice".

"They justified such findings by the facts that the accused were former secret police officers entrusted with the protection of public order, that the victim was a journalist, and that there was reasonable suspicion that the crime had been motivated by the preservation of the then political regime [of Milosevic]," the ECHR added.

It said that it agreed with the decision of the Serbian Constitutional Court that after April 2015 - when a preparatory hearing was held in the case - their continued...

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