September 16, 2022
Less than five months after the appeals lodged against the first-instance verdicts convicting those suspected of murdering Slavko Ćuruvija arrived at the Court of Appeal in Belgrade, a public hearing with which the trial process would resume has yet to be scheduled. Instead, the judges of the five-member panel tasked with deciding in this process, which has now entered its eighth year, have been changed for a third time.
Changes to the judicial panel, the new president of which is Nada Hadži Perić, delayed the start of the process of considering the appeals against the first-instance verdict for the murder of journalist Slavko Ćuruvija. The trial of the four accused members of the State Security Services has lasted more than seven years already.
The case has been with the Court of Appeal for more than five months, since 23rd March, due to both prosecutor Milenko Mandić and defence lawyers having appealed the first-instance verdict brought in December 2021. It was then, but also in the original 2019 verdict, that former senior leaders and operatives of the State Security Service, Radomir Marković, Milan Radonjić, Miroslav Kurak and Ratko Romić, received non-binding convictions for the 11th April 1999 murder of journalist and publisher Slavko Ćuruvija and were sentenced to a total of 100 years in prison.
