Chief of Commission for investigating the killings of journalists: Never before Has a Judge Sued a Journalist Demanding Jail Term

Veran Matic(BETAPHOTO/MEDIJA CENTAR BEOGRAD/MO)

Commenting on the case of Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK), Veran Matic, the chairman of the Commission for investigating the killings of journalists, ha said that never before has a judge sued a journalist in a criminal procedure demanding harsh sentences, such as a ten-month jail term or to be banned from working over two years.  

Dusanka Djordjevic, a Court of Appeals judge, has sued KRIK editor Stevan Dojcinovic and journalist Bojana Pavlovic for publishing information about her assets and the decisions she has handed down in court. The trial began on Sept. 26. Aside from monetary damages, the judge and her husband Aleksandar Djordjevic also demand that the two journalists be banned from working for a period of two years and to serve ten months in prison each. 

Matic, who was present at the hearing, has told Insider TV that the whole case is “particularly dramatic” because the charges contain no criminal offense. “Our KRIK colleagues have published data from publically available resources which can be accessible to anyone in the public space. The pair has never denied the published information, they were asked to comment on them, but they declined... What is dramatic about this case is the terrifying pressure exerted on KRIK and its editor Stevan Dojcinovic,” Matic specified. 

He also said that the content published about judge Djordjevic by KRIK contained no opinion or comment, but only open data about assets of the judge and her husband, a former intelligence officer. 

“She has been engaged in numerous court proceedings, and one of her latest was the case in which the accused for murder of our colleague Slavko Curuvija were cleared, after two first instance court rulings sentencing them to 100 years in prison. She also has a number of other similar cases under her belt, but what is particularly interesting is that her husband worked for the State Security when Rade Markovic was at its helm and when Curuvija was gunned down, he was close to Mirjana Markovic (the wife of former president Slobodan Milosevic), and so on. But, none of this is contained in the article published by KRIK,” Matic stressed.