Slavko Ćuruvija

Belgrade Court of Appeal has ended the house arrest order for two Serbian State Security operatives, Ratko Romic and Milan Radonjic, who are currently being retried for participation in murder of prominent opposition Serbian journalist Slavko Curuvija in April 1999.

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.

Former Serbian State Security Unit for Special Operations, commander Milorad "Legija" Ulemek, refused to answer questions about the murder of Serbian journalist Slavko Curuvija at the Belgrade Court of Appeal.

Legija told the court that he stands by his 2014 statement from the investigation and his 2016 statement from the first trial.

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".

Belgrade Higher Court on Thursday found four former Serbian state security employees guilty after a retrial of the murder in 1999 of journalist and editor Slavko Curuvija, who was known for his opposition to the regime of Slobodan Milosevic.

"When I came to [daily newspaper] Borba in 1990, he was a reporter and political analyst, and known for writing a couple of pamphlets, one of which I remember was about the people from Goli Otok [political prison in Socialist Yugoslavia]," Gunjic recalled.

The Chairman of Serbia's Commission for Investigating Murders of Journalists during Slobodan Milosevic's regime, Veran Matic, told BIRN that investigators still face grave risks doing their job.

The attack was in this way extended to publisher and journalist Slavko Curuvija, 20 years after his murder, and several days after a verdict was passed, sentencing those who carried the crime out to a total of a hundred years in prison, the commission said.

In a press release, the organization said they were sentenced for Serbian newspaper editor Slavko Curuvijas murder in 1999, and urged the authorities "to pursue the investigation in order to identify and punish the person who ordered the murder."

A statement issued on Thursday contained the relevant portion of the closing argument, and noted that according to some Belgrade media, Prosecutor Milenko Mandic had stated that "the whole government was a jury" when the state leadership in 1999 decided to kill Slavko Curuvija.