The case of Slavko Ćuruvija: "ours" shot

It was April in Belgrade, Sunday lunch time. There was a war, the NATO bombing in 1999. On that day, the biggest Christian holiday, Easter, was also celebrated. However, louder than the bombs and liturgical bells, the news echoed - the journalist Slavko Ćuruvija was killed. "Ours" shot. They shot the truth. For more than 23 years, that truth has been waiting to be resurrected. In the week ahead, after an eight-year process, the judges of the Court of Appeal will make the final verdict on whether they will send the accused for the murder of the journalist, former members of the State Security Service - Radomir Marković, Milan Radonjić, Ratko Romić and the fugitive Miroslav Kurak, to 100 years in prison, as they convicted in the first instance.

In that spring of the war, it was feared in Serbia that every new flash in the sky would bring bombs that could flatten everything under it. However, almost every independent journalist, in those days, was more afraid of being "eaten by darkness" on earth. The media were censored and imprisoned, journalists were detained, the truth that the "list of those unfit for shooting" existed was spoken in whispers, as if at a funeral, and the state took aim.

Media preparation of the murder

The murder of journalist, editor and owner of Dnevni telegraf and Evropljanin Slavko Ćuruvija was preceded by media preparation. Five days before the murder, the daily newspaper Politika Ekspres published an article titled "Ćuruvija met the bombs", which was then read in the Second Daily of RTS. In that text, Ćuruvija was labeled as a traitor who supports the bombing of Serbia. The text was signed by the former editor-in-chief of Politika Ekspres Đorđe Martić, who said during the trial that he received the order to brand his colleague from the director and editor-in-chief of Politika Hadži Dragan Antic", who was one of the closest friends of the ruling Milošević family at the time. By the way, Slavko Ćuruvija has been criticizing the government for years, not only through texts, but he also expressed his objections openly to Mirjana Marković, the wife of the president, with whom he occasionally had personal contact. The media lynching on the eve of the crime did not take Ćuruvi seriously, as if in spite, in those days he walked with his partner, like a free citizen, on the busiest streets of the capital. The day before the murder, as journalist Dušan Mašić described in his book "Serbian Waves", he met Ćuruvia in Knez Mihajlova.

"When I asked him what he was doing, he said, ``I'm cutting them.'' He took out a small hatchet from under his leather jacket. I thought ¨It's completely gone¨. We exchanged a few sentences and parted ways. Everyone with their own worries. 24 hours later, they will wait for him in the front entrance of the house and kill him."

Namely, the DB followed Ćuruvia right up to the very execution so that the murderers would have a "pure target", and then did everything to cover up traces, destroy evidence, direct the investigation in another direction, intimidate witnesses, compromise or even try to kill those who had the courage to bring the masterminds and murderers to justice.

According to the indictment, with the help of key evidence, the minutes before the crime looked like this: in the center of Belgrade, on April 11, 1999, journalist Slavko Ćuruvija, with his partner Branka Prpa, were walking towards the house in Svetogorska Street. Along it, and in the surrounding streets, 27 State Security agents were deployed. They followed every step of the journalist.

Calling NC

This is also shown by the on-call log; DB employee Cvijetin Milinković at the time wrote at 16.07:XNUMX p.m.:

"He's calling NC." Order - let him know immediately if they go home, maybe we will apply some other measure."

The only legal "second measure" in those conditions could be the arrest or detention of the person being followed. Slavko Ćuruvija, however, was killed about half an hour later. Cell phone base stations show where the accused and their associates were on April 11.

At 16:25 p.m., the head of the Belgrade DB center, Milan Radonjić, ordered - the monitoring is stopped!

While the other agents were leaving, one still went after Ćuruvija and Prpa. Ratko Romić was walking behind them, Miroslav Kurak was waiting for them in front of the entrance to the building. A few minutes later, between 16.39:16.45 and XNUMX:XNUMX, Slavko Ćuruvija was killed.

The data from the base stations of judges Snežana Jovanović, Vladimir Mesarović and Dragan Milošević were barely included in the evidence. According to the data from the investigation, the base stations also show who was talking to whom on the phone during that period. Namely, at 16:28 Radonjić called Kurak - and it was recorded that they spoke 21 times that day. The calls of Romić and Kurak were also recorded. The indictment specifically points out that at 16:38 Romić, who was walking behind Ćuruvija, called Kurak, who was at the passage where the journalist was killed, at XNUMX:XNUMX.

A minute later, Romić called his chief Radonjić. The investigation also shows that during those hours, Kurak spoke intensively with Franko Simatović. Radonjić was often in contact with Simatović. Shortly after the murder, Radonjić called the head of the DB, Rade Marković, as well as his godfather, and Marković's deputy, Branko Crno. According to investigative journalists, Branko Crni was the first operative and practically the mastermind of the State Security at that time, after the October 5th changes he was on the list of suspects and was included in the pre-criminal proceedings, then he got involved politically, at some point he became an official of the SNS . When the proceedings for the murder of Ćuruvija began, he found himself only on the witness stand from which he lashed out at his colleagues from the DB who were ready to speak about this crime.

A murder born of human passion

Due to censorship and the then scandalous Law on Information on the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija, most of the media only gave agency news. However, the Vreme weekly made a larger text. Let us recall that the Republic's Minister for Information and the enforcer of the controversial law was Aleksandar Vučić, the current president of Serbia. In the book Waves of Serbia, it is also stated that Dragoljub Žarković, the former editor of the newspaper Vreme, spoke about the murder of Ćuruvija, but also to the censors.

¨It was vindictive, arising not from political but from human passion. If those hitmen are ever found and DB's role in the matter is finally brought to light, we will see that it was punishment for a perceived betrayal of friendship. One form of pathology. The day after the murder, I went to Vučić for ¨censorship¨. Filip Švarm, my deputy, and I were constantly gambling on who would go to Vučić. We draw cards, so whoever draws the smaller one goes. We did not draw tickets that day. I called Vucic and told him: "We are going to publish the whole page about the murder of Ćuruvija". And he says: "How about the whole side?", I say: "Nice. If you want ¨Vreme¨ to be believed in wartime circumstances, we cannot come out with a piece of agency news at the moment when a colleague is killed." And he says: "Well, I would like to see that." He didn't care either. It was already the third week of bombing and he already started to ¨let us go¨ in the style of ¨I will not watch it. I have no reason to doubt you¨. He feigned some friendship. When I brought him the text about Ćuruvija, he looked at the other side, then read, read, read and finally said: "Good. There is no problem". I felt two things there. First, that Vučić was scared. That he was personally afraid and I think he had more reason to be afraid than the journalists. I am not saying that Ćuruvija and the ¨Family¨ were in great friendship. They were in a kind of cooperation during a certain period of Ćuruvija's activity. I think that Mira Marković fixed that she and Ćuruvija are close by vocation. And it is normal that Vučić, who entered into an alliance with them, was afraid for himself. He saw how they punished people. Second, I felt a kind of human disgust in Vučić over such a single act. That is why I think that it was not a form of state repression against the media, but simply individual revenge.¨

Veran Matić, the president of the Commission for Investigating Murders of Journalists, recently said on the Insider Interview show that there is a political responsibility of the then Minister of Information, and the current President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, for the situation in the media at the end of the 1998s. During the mandate of Vučić in the Ministry of Information, at the end of XNUMX, the Law on Information was adopted, which, among other things, prescribed draconian punishments for the media.

Judicial process depends on political will

"I expect that this will also be adequately investigated to the end and determine certain types of responsibility of Aleksandar Vučić and the president of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Šešelj. The first time I had a meeting with Aleksandar Vučić was when they won the 2012 elections. I think that then, and now, he has the political will to resolve the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija and that the accused be convicted - among other things, out of personal interests, but I think that if the accused are acquitted, he will also be the big loser of that verdict," said Matić.

Indeed, the investigation and court process against Ćuruvija always depended, not on police investigation, but on political will. Namely, until the indictment was filed, the investigation lasted as long as 15 years, although the Report on the Secret Monitoring of Journalists, the so-called Ćuran Dossier, was disclosed a year and a half after the murder, that is, a year after the October XNUMXth Revolution. Everything could have been solved back then, the government changed, but not the Service. And they are still here! That is why the indictment does not include the names of the principal and the direct executor, that is why many, instead of the defendants, became witnesses, who actually intimidated other witnesses and caused them collective amnesia. It remains for the judges of the Court of Appeal to decide whether justice in Serbia will forget about the shooting of journalists or whether they will show that killing journalists does not kill the truth.

Jelena Zoric