A Belgrade court on Friday sentenced to prison four former secret police officers for their involvement in the infamous 1999 murder of prominent journalist and publisher Slavko Curuvija who was gunned down in front of his home in Belgrade during the rule of Serbia's 1990s strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

The trial, which had started in June 2015, took just under four years to complete,with sentences handed down days before the 20th anniversary of the April 1999 killing of Curuvija.

The four men convicted on Friday include Radomir Markovic, the former head of state security RDB during Milosevic’s regime, and three of his subordinates.

Curuvija, a longtime journalist, editor, and publisher, was gunned down in front of his apartment building in Belgrade on April 11, 1999 during the NATO bombing campaign on Serbia, following fierce attacks and smear campaign engineered by pro-regime media outlets which accused Curuvija of siding with NATO against Serbia.

At the time, Curuvija published the Dnevni Telegraf daily and the Evropljanin weekly magazine, both of which were fined under the Information Law for printing critical stories about the Milosevic regime.

The four defendants were handed a total of 100 years in prison on Friday. Markovic and Belgrade RDB bureau chief Milan Radonjic were sentenced to 30 years in prison each, while RDB agents Ratko Romic and Miroslav Kurak received 20 years in prison sentence each.

The court ruled that Markovic had ordered Radonjic to organise the killing of Curuvija, and that Romic and Kurak were ordered to commit the murder.

Kurak is at large and was sentenced in absentia, while Markovic is already serving a 40-year sentence handed to him in 2008 for organising a 1999 assassination attempt against 1990s opposition leader Vuk Draskovic, in which four activists were killed, as well as the the 2000 abduction and murder of former President of Serbia Ivan Stambolic.

The prosecution had asked for the maximum sentences of 40 years in prison for all four defendants. 

Curuvija Foundation, politicians, journalists satisfied with verdict  

Political parties, journalists’ associations, and the Slavko Curuvija Foundation – an NGO established in 2013 to promote journalism reporting standards – all hailed the Friday verdict as an important step in Serbia’s reckoning with politically motivated crimes of the 1990s.  

The Foundation said that the verdict confirmed “clearly and unequivocally” that the murder had been organised by the government through its State Security Department, but added that they were disappointed in that the court failed to hand down maximum 40-year sentences to all four defendants. They added that the court ruling would help society deal with politically motivated crimes of the past and face the “disastrous heritage of the Milosevic regime.” 

Serbia’s current President, Aleksandar Vucic, served as the country’s Information Minister at the time of Curuvija’s murder, in the coalition government formed by Vucic’s former party, the nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) and Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS).

On Friday, Vucic said that he felt “great satisfaction” that the trial had been brought to its conclusion, saying that the verdict sent a very important message. “A message that no one has the right to kill anyone, in any way, for any reason, even if they believe that the reason is a matter of state (importance),” he said.  

The opposition Movement of Free Citizens (PSG) said that justice had only been partially served. They said that the sentence handed down to the former state security chief and his associates is a sentence against the 1990s Milosevic regime which was “characterised by political murders and the persecution of journalists.”  

The Journalists’ Association of Serbia (UNS) called on government bodies to find the person who pulled the trigger in the Curuvija assassination, and added that it expected the verdict to be confirmed on appeal. It said that the verdict is significant because it marks “an end of impunity for crimes committed against journalists.”

Follow N1 via mobile apps for Android | iPhone/iPad | Windows| and social media on Twitter | Facebook.