A Serbian appeals court has acquitted four former intelligence officers convicted of the brutal 1999 murder of journalist Slavko Ćuruvija, a fierce critic of former Serbian head of state and war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, AFP reports.
The ruling overturns the group's previous convictions in 2021, which sentenced them to several decades in prison.
"The Court of Appeal - in the absence of direct and circumstantial evidence that reliably confirms that the defendants Markovic, Radonic, Kurak and Romic, were the perpetrators of this criminal act - finds that the allegations in the indictment have not been proven beyond reasonable doubt," the court said in a statement.
In 2021, a special court sentenced former secret police chief Radomir Markovic and Belgrade intelligence chief Milan Radonic to 30 years in prison, while two other intelligence officers received 20-year sentences.
In 2019, an earlier court ruling found the four guilty, but that decision was overturned and a retrial ordered.
Ćuruvija was one of Serbia's most critical voices in the 1990s, attracting a wide readership as the owner and editor of two leading opposition publications.
He was shot 13 times outside his home in Belgrade during the NATO bombing campaign launched in response to the Milosevic government's brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in the late 1990s.
The journalist was brutally murdered just a few days after pro-government media accused him of being a 'traitor' for calling on NATO to bomb Serbia.
Journalists have long been the target of attacks in Serbia, where reporters and editors who criticise the authorities are intimidated and silenced.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, a former information minister under Milosevic, regularly berates reporters during his daily public addresses. / BGNES
