BELGRADE – Deputy Chief Prosecutor at Kosovo’s Special Prosecution Office Jonathan Ratel has pledged that EULEX will reopen all cases of kidnapped and murdered journalists in Kosovo-Metohija, the Journalists’ Association of Serbia (UNS) has said in a release.
A delegation of UNS representatives met with Ratel at the EULEX headquarters in Pristina Friday for exchange of information on the cases involving kidnappings and murders of journalists in the southern Serbian province.
Ratel pledged he would do everything he could, in cooperation with the prosecutor’s offices in Pristina and Prizren, the Kosovo police and the EULEX Department of Forensic Medicine, to find the necessary information and launch an investigation to find out the truth and carry justice in the cases of disappearances of journalists in Kosovo, according to the UNS release.
The UNS delegation expressed concern over the United Nations Advisory Commission statement in which they pointed out that in the case of disappearance of Marjan Melonasi, the investigation had begun as late as in 2005 and had been closed immediately after a relevant database had been created.
President of UNS Kosovo Budimir Nicic presented Ratel with information on the seven journalists who had been kidnapped and murdered in Kosovo from 1998 to 2000.
Nicic was particularly interested in knowing in what ways EULEX was contributing to investigating procedures in the cases of disappearance of Ranko Perenic and Djuro Slavuj, Serb journalists working for RTV Pristina.
The two journalists were abducted in the area of Orahovac, controlled by former ethnic Albanian paramilitary organization Kosovo Liberation Army, on August 21, 1998, before the arrival of the international community in the province.
Nicic informed Ratel that UNS representatives had been placing a memorial board with the message “We are looking for them!” (Trazimo ih!) at the site on the road between Velika Hoca and Zociste where Perenic and Slavuj had disappeared for three years in a row now, and unknown perpetrators had been destroying it a few days later every time.
The UNS has been duly informing the Kosovo police about these incidents, but the police have done nothing in terms of investigation and looking for the perpetrators, said Nicic.
Ratel told the UNS representatives that EULEX would certainly investigate all the circumstances of the disappearances of journalists in Kosovo and that they would search all databases to find all the necessary information.
Ratel announced the possibility of EULEX asking for help from the competent bodies at the UN in New York where they had databases of information about their abducted and missing colleagues.
UNS Kosovo member Zivojin Rakocevic said that the journalists’ associations and the families of the missing believed that the most important thing right now was to keep these cases visible and to end the conspiracy of silence.
