July 17, 2017
Milan Radonjić, former head of the Belgrade Centre of the State Security Service of Serbia, and Ratko Romić, a former state security official, have seen their prison detainment cancelled and replaced with house arrest, with the defendants obliged to were electronic ankle monitors.
They have been released from prison after three and a half years, after having been arrested in early 2014, at the time when the indictment was filed for the April 1999 murder of journalist and owner of Dnevni Telegraf and magazine Evropljanin, Slavko Ćuruvija.
The Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation expressed disquiet over this decision and reminded that Radonjić and Romić are charged with committing a serious murder. “Under these circumstances, house arrest may look like giving undue privileges,” an SĆF statement notes.
The Commission for Investigating Murders of Journalists, the establishment of which led to the indictment for the murder of Ćuruvija, said that “it is clear even to laymen” that this decision is controversial on multiple fronts and that the trial chamber allowed the accused to “agree to their further defence on the basis of evidence that still has not been presented”.
President of the commission, Veran Matić, notes that he is particularly concerned about the fact that “some witnesses stated that they had been beaten, and that it has still not been determined who threatened them, nor have the testimonies of all witnesses been heard”.
Photo: Jana Nikolić / Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation
