October 15, 2021
The retrial for the murder of journalist and publisher Slavko Ćuruvija has seen the defence lawyers request acquittals for the four former members of the State Security Service accused of committing the crime.
The previous, first-instance trial resulted in the four defendants being convicted and receiving a combined sentence totalling 100 years in prison.
The lawyer of Radomir Marković, the former head of the State Security Service who has already received a 40-year sentence for his participation in assassinations and murders of opposition politicians, said that his client has already spent 21 years in prison without any valid evidence, “just because he is a patriot and honourable”.
The other lawyers also reiterated the claim that there is no evidence against their clients, while the lawyer of two of the accused, Milan Radonjić and Ratko Romić, spent three hours contesting all of the prosecution’s evidence against her clients, while she also accused the media of producing “a large number of spins” and of “being complicit in the sacrificing of the accused”.
The accused will be given time to present their closing arguments at the next hearings – scheduled to be held on 25th and 26th October.
Ćuruvija was gunned down in 1999. The trial began in 2015 and a first-instance verdict was brought in 2019. The Court of Appeal’s subsequent annulling of the verdict led to the retrial beginning in October 2020.
