14. 07. 2007

ANASTASIJEVIĆ CASE AT STANDSTILL

BELGRADE, 14 July 2007. (B92) - Three months after an attack on Vreme weekly journalist Dejan Anastasijević, perpetrators are still at large.

On April 14, a hand grenade exploded outside Anastasijević’s apartment in Belgrade, in what was seen as an attempted murder on the prominent Serbian journalist.

Two hand grenades were planted at the window seal of his bedroom, one of which exploded. No one was injured in the incident.

Serbian police (MUP) Director Milorad Veljović said at the time the police considered the attack an attempted murder with traces of terrorism. His colleagues from Belgrade’s criminal police department said they obtained leads that set the course of the investigation.

Meanwhile, police interrogated about a hundred persons and detained and subsequently released eight members of former paramilitary unit called Scorpions.

It is believed that the attack was somehow linked to Anastasijević's criticism of the April 10 ruling against the Scorpions.

Namely, Anastasijević criticized Serbia's War Crimes Court for its verdict in the case of five Serb paramilitaries exposed in a taped execution of six Muslims in Bosnia in 1995.

The court sentenced four of the defendants to up to 20 years in jail, but cleared the fifth, and Anastasijević said the verdict was too lenient.

However, police so far have not filed a single criminal complaint regarding the case. Anastasijević says that nobody from the police has officially contacted him since May.

“They told me to be patient and that they were working intensively on the case. But that was one and a half months ago,” he said.

“It means that those who tried to kill me and my wife are still on the run.”

Criminologist Dobrivoje Radovanović said that unless this case was solved, the state would need to explain itself.

“It would indicate that either the police are not qualified for the task, which is highly unlikely, or that there is a political interest not to expose attackers on Serbian journalists,” Radovanović said.