SERBIA
and MONTENEGRO
Posted: August 22, 2005
Bardhyl Ajeti, Bota Sot
KILLED—CONFIRMED
Ajeti, 28, a reporter for the Albanian-language daily Bota Sot (World Today), died in an Italian hospital on June 25, three weeks after being shot in Kosovo, Agence France-Presse reported.
Ajeti was driving from Kosovo's capital, Pristina, to the eastern Kosovo town of Gnjilane on June 3 when at least one attacker shot at him from a passing car, according to the Kosova Journalists Association, a local union. Ajeti fell into a coma after being shot and was evacuated to a hospital in Milan where he died, according to Agence France-Presse.
Police spokesman Refki Morina said that Ajeti was shot in the head from a close range, but did not identify any possible motives, according to The Associated Press.
Baton Haxhiu, president of the Kosova Journalists' Association, told CPJ in a telephone interview that Ajeti wrote daily editorials for Bota Sot, which is allied with the governing Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) party. He often criticized opposition party figures in his editorials, Haxhiu told CPJ.
The Temporary Media Commissioner, Kosovo’s internationally supervised media regulator, said in a June 6 statement that Ajeti filed a complaint with the office on May 17 saying that his life had been threatened in a recent newspaper article.
In summer 2002, Bota Sot and Ajeti supported international authorities who arrested former members of the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) as part of a broader anti-crime campaign, according to the London-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting.
A July 11, 2002, editorial by Ajeti carried the heading, “Let's support KFOR and UNMIK in the war against political and organized crime.” In a July 22 issue he criticized nationalist Albanian protestors for demanding that international forces release the arrested members of the KLA.
JUNE 11, 2005
Posted: June 30, 2005
Grujica Spasovic, Danas
Danas
THREATENED
An anonymous telephone threat was made to the Belgrade-based independent daily after Danas reported that the Serbian government had identified the town where indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic was hiding.
On June 10, Danas reported that Mladic was residing in one of the larger towns in central Serbia and that the government was deliberating how to apprehend him. The article relied on an unnamed source. Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander who has been indicted by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Serbian Interior Minister Dragan Jocic denied media reports about Mladic's whereabouts, the Belgrade-based independent radio station B92 reported. Danas said it stood by its story.
On June 11, a day after the article was published, a man identifying himself as "personal security of General Ratko Mladic from Republika Srpska" called the Danas newsroom and asked to speak with Spasovic, the editor-in-chief. According to a transcript of the call published in Danas, the caller said: "Pass him [Spasovic] the message: From today on, he is dead. We will kill him, cut his head off, legs and arms, for what he wrote ... published about General Mladic." Spasovic told CPJ that he has received numerous threats during his 20-year career, but this one left him especially concerned for his safety.
On June 13, Danas Director Radivoj Cveticanin sent an official request to the Interior Ministry, asking it to investigate the threat and provide protection for Spasovic and his family. The Interior Ministry did not respond for seven days. On June 20, the Interior Ministry invited Spasovic to give a statement regarding the threat. He gave a statement at the Belgrade branch of the Interior Ministry the next day, but police did not offer protection to him or his family.
JULY 14, 2005
Posted: July 18, 2005
B92
THREATENED
An anonymous caller told a security guard at the Belgrade-based independent radio and television station that a bomb would explode in an hour inside the station's offices because of its "anti-Serb campaign," according to local news reports and CPJ interviews.
B92 director Veran Matic told CPJ that about 15 staffers were evacuated from the premises for about two hours while the police examined the building and its surroundings. No explosive devices were found.
B92 said in a statement that the threat was made after Vjerica Radeta, a member of Parliament from the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), called the station "mercenary and anti-Serb" during a debate. SRS vice-president Aleksandar Vucic made a similar charge against the station on July 9.
The station also received a bomb threat on July 11 after a live broadcast of the commemoration of the 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, B92 journalist Marko Mrkic told CPJ.
Matic told CPJ that threats against B92 have intensified during the last year, and many have been made directly against him and his family. "The radicalization and the rise of the number of threats are the results of the inefficient reaction of the government and the police to the past threats," Matic told CPJ.
B92 has provided extensive news coverage of politically sensitive war crimes issues in Serbia and is the only broadcaster in the region providing live coverage of the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague-based United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.