17. 12. 2004

CURUVIJA KILLER “KNOWN FOR A YEAR”

BELGRADE, December 17, 2004 – Serbian police have known for a year who murdered publisher Slavko Curuvija in 1999, B92 has learnt. According to the findings of a B92 investigative crew, Montenegrin organised crime figure Luka Pejovic was identified as the killer during 2003 when New Serbia leader Dusan Mihajlovic was minister for internal affairs. Pejovic had already been murdered himself near his Belgrade home at the time he was identified as the killer. A witness to the murder gave the police a written statement in which he identified Pejovic but B92’s investigators have been unable to discover why this information was not released to the public. The president of the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia, Nebojsa Bugarinovic, said that it was shocking to wait four or five years for the names of people responsible for two crimes against journalists in Serbia and that the representatives of the former and current Serbian governments, who had declared themselves for a democratic society and free media before October 5, 2000, to determinedly and clearly conceal information. “I don’t know what their reason is for this decision, but the fact that two ministers and the special prosecutor have done this leads me to the conclusion that these people simply don’t care about public opinion or crimes which have been committed,” said Bugarinovic. The organised crime prosecution and the Organised Crime Division said on December 9, 2003, that a previously unknown witness had positively identified people suspected of direct involvement in the crime. The two bodies said that, because this was an organised political murder, the investigation was aimed at identifying who had commissioned the crime. Because of that, they, said, the case would not be served by releasing the identity of the suspects. Luka Pejovic, from the Montenegrin city of Niksic, who was identified as Curuvija’s killer, was himself murdered on December 5, 2000, near his home in Dinarska Street in Belgrade. At the time media described him as a member of a notorious Montenegrin gang in the Belgrade underground and a known drug trafficker. Members of the Belgrade Montenegrin underground are notorious for doing “dirty work” for the state security services. B92 sources described the way in which Pejovic was killed as bearing the signature of a professional special unit. The unidentified gunman fired more than twenty rounds from a 7.62 calibre Kalashnikov automatic rifle into Pejovic and a companion, Radule Kasalica, who was with him at the time. Pejovic was wounded by the first shot and attempted to escape down Dinarska Street but was dispatched by another two shots to the head.