Questioning of new witness in the Serbian journalist Slavko Ćuruvija's murder case has resumed, according to Tanjug news agency. In a supplement to the application for an investigation to be carried out, the Special Prosecution recently proposed questioning a further 10 to 15 new witness, and as well for a medical-ballistic forensic examination to be performed.
The names of the witness, as well as the names of those that investigative judges at the Belgrade District Court’s Special Department are still to question, cannot be publicly released, because, by law, these proceedings are not public.
Certain Belgrade media have speculated that among those questioned over the assassination of the late journalist and daily Dnevni Telegraf owner, should be Dejan Milenković, aka Bugsy, a protected witness at the Zoran Đinđić murder trial.
Almost nine years since the April 11, 1999 murder of Curuvija, his killers remain unidentified. "No relevant information is yet available about Curuvija's killers," Reporters sans frontières (RSF) had said in a letter to the interior minister in 2005. "We are dismayed by the lack of results and the failure of the Serbian authorities to carry out an investigation capable of finding out the truth about this case."
RSF had said, "Despite repeated promises to solve this case, it is clear that the investigations are at a standstill. Curuvija's family and his colleagues in Serbia and the rest of the world have a right to know the truth. We once again call on the authorities to do everything possible to clarify all the precise circumstances of this tragedy."
According to the Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC), a Serbian human rights NGO that was the first to discover that Curuvija was under close police surveillance at the time of his murder, those implicated in his death still have a close relationship with the Serbian national security agencies and this may explain why the investigation has not progressed.
Curuvija, who edited the newspapers Dnevni Telegraf and Evropljanin, was shot dead by two masked men in front of his Belgrade home on April 11, 1999, during the NATO military offensive. Curuvija was returning home with his wife at the time of the shooting. He had been repeatedly harassed for his articles critical of the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic and various state-owned newspapers had called him a "traitor".
