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Lawyer, fighter for human rights, one of the founders of the weekly Vreme and its former majority owner
Lawyer, fighter for human rights, one of the founders of the weekly Vreme and its former majority owner, Srđa Popović, died at the age of 76, after a short and serious illness in Belgrade.
He graduated from the Faculty of Law in 1961 and became a partner in the family law office founded in 1933 by his father Miodrag.
Since 1965, Srđa Popović has started to defend defendants in major political trials, and represents publishers who were denied their freedom.
It was also sung in a particularly popular song in 68: "Walls, walls, there are no doors anywhere, call me, call, Heart of a lawyer".
He defended young Zoran Djindjic, Brigitte Mohnhaupt from the Baader-Meinhof group, Vojislav Seselj, Dusan Makavejev, Milorad Vučelić, Mihajlo Marković, Mića Popović, Predrag Čudić, Nebojša Popov, Vladimir Mijanović aka Vlada Revolution, Milan Nikolić, Božidar Jakšić, Mihajlo Mihailov, Momčil Selić, Dobroslav Paragu, Gojko Đog, Milan Milišić, Vladimir Šeks, Andrija Artuković, the "Belgrade Six", professors expelled from the Faculty of Philosophy...
Due to his speech at the "Culture and Revolution" symposium in 1974, the writer Dragoljub Ignjatović was sentenced to 3 years in prison for a verbal offense. Srđa Popović defended him and proved the truth of his claims in court. The public prosecutor accused Srđa Popović of spreading false news because of what he said in court while performing his duty as a lawyer, and the court in Valjevo first sentenced him to one year in prison, and then in 1976 changed it to a two-year suspended sentence. year and a ban on performing the duties of a lawyer within one year.
In 1976, the London newspaper The Times wrote about him: "Popović has long been a stigmatized man in Yugoslavia, because he is one of the brave men and women who defend those persecuted for their beliefs..."
He belonged to the petition movement and was the initiator and signatory of the petitions for the abolition of Article 133 (delict of speech), for the abolition of the death penalty, for the adoption of the law on amnesty, for the introduction of a multi-party system in SFRY.
Among other things, he is the author of three books "The Last Instance", which are documents about staged political processes in 1968-1988.
In 1990, he was one of the founders and majority owner of the weekly Vreme. At the time when he owned a controlling stake in Vremen, he did not interfere in editorial politics, and he led polemics with members of the editorial staff.
After Milosevic came to power and due to public threats, he moved with his family to the USA in 1991. Returned only after the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic on October 5, 2000.
He was the founder of the World Association of Lawyers, the president of the European Movement in Serbia, a member of the advisory body of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in New York, and the winner of the Rule of Law Award for '93, awarded by the New York branch of the American Bar Association.
In the trial for the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, he was the lawyer of the Djindjic family.
The first issue of Vremena was published on October 29, 1990, and 23 years have passed since then.
Read more in the text Contribution to the culture of memory: the anniversary of our paper
Download the first issue of "Vremen" here (19MB).
The archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
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