The Murder of Slavko Ćuruvija

The killing

Slavko Ćuruvija was a prominent Serbian journalist, publisher and government critic who owned the daily Dnevni Telegraf and the weekly Evropljanin. On April 11, 1999, he was shot outside his home in central Belgrade. His partner, historian Branka Prpa, was with him and was struck during the attack but survived.

The murder came after a period of intense pressure on independent media. Contemporary and later press-freedom reporting documented state hostility toward Ćuruvija and his publications. That political context is important, but it does not by itself prove who ordered or physically carried out the killing.

The prosecution of former security officers

Years later, prosecutors charged four former members of Serbia's State Security Service: Radomir Marković, Milan Radonjić, Ratko Romić and Miroslav Kurak. The prosecution theory alleged that the crime had been organized through the security apparatus and ordered by an unidentified person.

In 2019, a Belgrade court convicted the four defendants and imposed lengthy prison sentences. That judgment was later overturned for procedural reasons, leading to a retrial rather than a final determination of guilt.

Convicted again, then acquitted

The retrial ended in December 2021 with another set of convictions: Marković and Radonjić received 30-year terms, while Romić and Kurak received 20-year terms. Kurak had been tried in absentia. Those convictions were again appealed.

A five-judge panel of the Belgrade Court of Appeal ultimately acquitted all four defendants. The decision was made in April 2023 and publicly announced on February 2, 2024. The appellate court said the prosecution had not proved the accusations beyond a reasonable doubt. The acquittal was final and could not be appealed in the ordinary way.

The Supreme Court's later legality review

The case did not end without further judicial scrutiny. Acting on an extraordinary request for protection of legality, Serbia's Supreme Court later concluded that the appellate acquittal contained substantial procedural violations that benefited the defendants. The ruling, made in October 2025 and publicized in January 2026, criticized the appellate court's treatment of important witness testimony and other evidence.

That finding did not reverse the acquittal. Under the applicable Serbian procedural rules, the Supreme Court's ruling was declaratory in this posture: the final acquittal remained legally binding and could not be converted back into a conviction or used to order a new trial against the acquitted defendants.

Why the case remains unresolved

There is a critical difference between saying that a court found legal defects in an acquittal and saying that the defendants were legally guilty. The first is documented; the second is not the current judgment. Earlier convictions no longer supply a valid final basis for labeling any of the four men as Ćuruvija's murderer.

As of September 2026, the case therefore remains unresolved for Crime by Region's purposes. Ćuruvija's killing is established beyond dispute, but no person currently stands convicted of committing or ordering it. The identity of any person who commissioned the murder is likewise not judicially established.

Timeline

Current classification

The Murder of Slavko Ćuruvija is classified Unsolved / Partial. Earlier convictions demonstrate that Serbian courts once found sufficient evidence against four defendants, but the operative final judgment acquitted them. The later Supreme Court legality review criticized how that acquittal was reached without legally undoing it. This dossier therefore distinguishes institutional criticism, historical suspicion and superseded convictions from the current legal status.

Related Serbia case files