22. 12. 2004

PROSECUTION PURSUES INSIDER

BELGRADE, December 22, 2004 – Serbia’s Special Organised Crime Prosecution has launched an investigation of people responsible for revealing the name of Luka Pejovic, a suspect in the murder of publisher Slavko Curuvija in 1999, Nedeljni Telegraf reports. The weekly reported on Wednesday that there are unofficial reports of the Prosecution and the Council for Combatting Organised Crime having launched an investigation of the revelations. The naming of Luka Pejovic is seen as the unauthorised disclosure of classified information and is punishable by a prison term, says the report. Nedeljni Telegraf claims that Special Prosecution officials and the council called a meeting last weekend and came to the conclusion that the police investigation of Curuvija’s murder had been seriously compromised by the revelation of operational information. “With the publication of Pejovic’s name the entire investigation has been brought into question,” says the weekly’s source. Political commentator Milos Vasic says that the report should be taken with a grain of salt, because it is common knowledge that Pejovic was identified a year ago. Because of this, he says, it is difficult to see how the publishing of his name can harm the investigation. Rather, he says, it is important, six years after the murder, to begin somewhere, even if that is only publication of the name of the suspect. “It would be better for the Prosecution to point the investigation in the direction we have been indicating for years, and that is to identify the last person holding a microphone in the Operations Centre of the Belgrade State Security office on the day of the murder, who ordered the police surveillance lifted and to ascertain what the surveillance team had seen. “Most of these former State Security agents are still employed by today’s Security Intelligence Agency or have in some way been available to the Special Prosecution. Now it is all up to the Public Prosecutor, whether he will have the courage to seize this lead, the only lead available,” said Vasic. B92 informed Internal Affairs Minister Dragan Jocic in writing about the issue several days before revealing the information that the police had known the name of Curuvija’s killer for more than a year.