Belgrade journalist’s 1999 murder trial resumes

Curuvija was gunned down outside his home in April 1999 during the NATO bombing of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to stop police and military actions against the Kosovo Albanians.

He was killed allegedly for criticising the late President Slobodan Milosevic, his wife Mirjana Markovic, and their regime, both at home and abroad.

The prosecution accused top secret service’s officials of organising and executing Curuvija’s assassination during which his partner Branka Prpa was injured when the killer hit her in the head with a gun barrel.

The main accused is the then Secret Service’s chief Radomir Markovic who currently serves 40-year-imprisonment for the involvement in the murder of the members of an opposition party and the attempted murder of Vuk Draskovic, the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO).

The other three are the boss of the Belgrade Secret Service branch, the main intelligence inspector and a member of the agency’s reserve.

The first two were arrested in 2014 and has been in jail since, while the reservist, accused of pulling the trigger, Miroslav Kurak, is still at large.

Thursday’s session will hear testimonies of the police officers who, according to prosecutors, had information on the defendants’ movements on the day of the murder.

The defence team demanded the exclusion of that evidence, saying they were obtained unlawfully.

Curuvija’s murder is among the three most prominent killings of journalists in Serbia, while a book titled “The Heavens’ Newsroom” counted 19 cases of either unsolved or unexplained deaths of the journalists in the country.