Serbia

We issued the following statement after Croatian and Serbian prosecutors announced that they have charged eight men in an October 2008 car bombing that killed Ivo Pukanic, owner and editorial director of the Zagreb-based political weekly Nacional, and Niko Franjic, the paper’s marketing director...

New York, June 3, 2009--The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the arrests of three additional suspects in the October 2008 murders of Ivo Pukanic, owner and editorial director of the Zagreb-based political weekly Nacional, and Niko Franjic, the publication's marketing director. Three other suspects had been arrested in November 2008. 

Nationalists suffered a series of political defeats in 2008 and responded by lashing out against independent journalists and liberal reformers with threats and physical attacks. A reformist-nationalist coalition government led by the conservative Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica during the first half of the year and by liberal President Boris Tadic during the second half failed to adequately protect journalists from these abuses. The nationalists targeted independent journalists, rights activists, and reformist politicians for "betraying" Serbia, while police and prosecutors regularly turned a blind eye.