Slavko Curuvija. Photo: Slavko Curuvija Foundation/Predrag Mitic.
The Supreme Court in Serbia has ruled that the criminal code was violated when the Belgrade Court of Appeal in 2023 acquitted four former State Security officials over the 1999 murder of the prominent journalist, editor and publisher Slavko Curuvija – an outspoken critic of authoritarian Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
The Supreme Court ruling has no legal impact on the acquitted defendants, however.
Curuvija was shot dead in front of his home in Belgrade in April 1999 during the Kosovo war and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The 49-year-old publisher of Dnevni Telegraf newspaper and Evropljanin magazine was allegedly killed because of his criticism of Milosevic.
In its verdict, issued in October 2025 but made public only this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Belgrade Court of Appeal violated the law in how it treated some of the testimonies, as well as how it treated evidence about telephone communications.
Some of the violations relate to testimony given by key prosecution witness Milorad ‘Legija’ Ulemek, the notorious commander of the State Security Service’s Special Operations Unit, who is serving a prison sentence for killing Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic in 2003 and other crimes.
Ulemek was interviewed by prosecutors in 2014 and appeared in 2016 before the Belgrade Higher Court, giving testimony which the prosecution claimed implicated the defendants in Curuvija’s death.
He appeared again before the Court of Appeal in 2023 but refused to answer any questions, only stating that he stood by his 2014 statement from the investigation and his 2016 trial testimony.
However, the Supreme Court said that the second-instance Court of Appeal verdict stated that when Ulemek testified at the court in 2023, he “did not stand by” the allegedly incriminatory statement he gave in 2014.
The Supreme Court noted that in fact, Ulemek “repeatedly stated that he had nothing to add or take away from what he said in the previous testimony”.
The Appeal Court’s final acquittal verdict in the Curuvija murder trial, delivered in April 2023 but only made public in February 2024, angered media freedom campaigners who said it sent a message that crimes against journalists are tolerated in Serbia.
The acquittal ruling reversed a previous verdict in December 2021, which convicted former head of Serbian State Security Radomir Markovic, security service officer Milan Radonjic and secret service agents Ratko Romic and Miroslav Kurak of involvement in the murder.
Veran Matic, chairman of Serbia’s commission for probing cases of killed journalists, formed in 2012 by the government, welcomed the ruling by the Supreme Court that the criminal code was violated in the Appeals Court judgment, but said it “does not bring satisfaction to anyone”.
“The state and the relevant institutions owe the family of Slavko Curuvija the truth about the people who ordered the murder and the murderers, not just a statement about the violation of the law during the acquittal of the accused,” Matic said in a written statement.
“Colleagues from [Curuvija’s media outlets] Dnevni Telegraf and Evropljanin are owed the full truth about the months-long repression against the media company where they worked [in 1999], against them and their families,” he added.
Matic called for “the beginning of a new phase in determining responsibility for the outcome of the trial, but also the continuation of the investigation that will establish all the facts about the killers and the instigators”.
No one has yet been convicted of wrongdoing over the killing of Curuvija.
