Veran Matić: Supreme Court of Serbia rules that the Trial Chamber violated  the law in the proceedings against suspects in the murder of Ćuruvija  

By ruling No. Kzz OK 38-2024 of October 13, 2024, the Supreme Court of Serbia partially  upheld the request for the protection of legality filed by the public prosecutor of the Supreme  Public Prosecutor’s Office (KTŽ 166-24 of September 2, 2024). That ruling established that  the Panel of the Belgrade Court of Appeal, Special Department for Organized Crime— composed of Vesna Petrović (presiding judge), Nada Hadži Perić, Dragan Ćesarović, Marko  Jocić, and Dušanka Djordjević—by its judgment Kž1-Po1 9/22 of April 19, 2023, violated  the law within the meaning of Article 438, paragraph 2, item 2 of the Criminal Procedure  Code, in favor of the defendants Radomir Marković, Milan Radonjić, Miroslav Kurak, and  Ratko Romić. In doing so, contrary to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, the  panel issued an acquittal in the criminal proceedings for the aggravated murder of journalist  and owner of the daily Dnevni telegraf and the weekly Evropljanin, Slavko Ćuruvija.  

The Supreme Court of Serbia also found that the aforementioned judges violated the law in  favor of the defendants by factually misrepresenting decisive facts in their judgment, both  with regard to the testimony of key witnesses and with regard to the “Report on audio  recording transcription and forensic analysis and Review of stored data on realized telephone  communications” dated February 12, 2012. This report essentially represents an analysis of  communications conducted between April 9 and April 12, 1999, among Milan Radonjić,  Ratko Romić, and Miroslav Kurak—whose telephone numbers are explicitly listed—as well  as the telephone card number of the defendant Radomir Marković, including all data on  timing, type of communication, duration, cells, and addresses of base stations through which  the communications were carried out, as well as an analysis based on the unique  identification number of the mobile device (IMEI).  

With this ruling, the legal proceedings against the aforementioned defendants have been  concluded, since the Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that when the Supreme Court  establishes that a violation of the law has occurred, it may not affect the finality of the  contested decision to the detriment of the defendants. 

However, the question remains open as to whether the members of the Panel of the Special  Department of the Court of Appeal, by issuing an acquittal, merely violated the law or  actually broke it, which could entail criminal liability.  

This ruling brings satisfaction to no one. Some of the defendants have filed multiple lawsuits  against those who criticized the acquittal, which—according to the Supreme Court of  Serbia—was rendered with a serious violation of the provisions of criminal procedure.  

The state and competent institutions owe the family of Slavko Ćuruvija the truth about those  who ordered and carried out the murder, not merely a finding that legality was violated in the  acquittal of the accused. Journalists and colleagues from Dnevni telegraf and Evropljanin are  owed the full truth about the months-long repression against the media outlet in which they  worked, against them personally, and against their families. Just as the acquittal by the  Appellate Panel was not the end of this process, neither must this ruling of the Supreme Court  be its end, but rather the beginning of a new phase in determining responsibility for the  outcome of the trial, as well as the continuation of an investigation that will establish all the  facts about the perpetrators and those who ordered the murder.