29. 05. 2004

Another journalist silenced

BELGRADE, May 29, 2004 – The director and editor-in-chief of Podgorica daily Dan died at about 4.30 a.m. yesterday in the Montenegro Clinical Centre of gunshot wounds. Dusko Jovanovic (40) was shot several times in the chest and abdomen from an automatic weapon as he entered his car outside the Dan premises in 13. Jula Street in the Podgorica district of Momisici shortly after midnight. Eyewitnesses say that Jovanovic was shot from a moving vehicle, which they described as a black Golf without registration plates. The assailant is still unknown. The murder is the latest in a series of murders of journalists over the past five years. Dan and Jovanovic himself have been subject to a number of charges over publication of an article from Zagreb weekly Nacional in which the Montenegrin authorities are accused of cigarette smuggling in the Balkans. Other charges relate to articles on the Montenegrin white-slaving affair. More than thirty charges have been laid against Jovanovic himself. Dan lawyer Lidija Bozovic said that the daily had been under attack from the Montenegrin Government, adding that as many as eighteen libel cases are before the courts at the moment, in which damages sought range from a hundred thousand to a million euros. "If the Montenegrin police and judiciary had done their job, this would not have happened to Jovanovic," she said. Jovanovic was also the first journalist indicted by the Hague Tribunal for disclosing the identity of a protected witness. The murder of Jovanovic has been condemned by a number of political parties, journalist and media associations and international organisations including the OSCE. Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and President Filip Vujanovic have also made statements on the killing.