“It is necessary to establish a commission that would deal with investigations of missing and murdered journalists in Kosovo, the President of the Association of Journalists of Serbia in Kosovo, Budimir Nicic said at the roundtable on the freedom of the media and safety of journalists, RTV Puls reported.
Nicic reminded participants of the roundtable, organized in Pristina yesterday that Serbia and Montenegro have established such commissions and they yield results, while certain court proceedings were launched thanks to that results.
“The Commission should have been established here, in particular because there are several security systems dealing with these cases. We had UNMIK, EULEX, KFOR, domestic prosecution and police,” Nicic said.
He welcomed the decision of the chief prosecutor in Kosovo to appoint coordinators and prosecutors at basic courts that would deal with attacks against journalists, adding that in the period from 1998 to 2005, 14 journalists and media workers have been murdered or went missing.
“None of these cases have been resolved until date, and as far as we know the investigation is ongoing for one case only. We have to seek responses and to ask what is currently done, why these cases have not been resolved and what the problem is so they remain unresolved for twenty years,” Nicic said.
Kosovo Chief Prosecutor, Aleksander Lumezi, said “that these murders were committed in the period from 1998 to 2000, and one in 2004”.
“Although there were some investigation actions by the UNMIK police, all these files are considered as property of UNMIK and domestic police officers did not have insight into them. We are now in negotiations to transfer these cases to domestic prosecutors,” Lumezi said.
However, Lumezi’s data, differ from the results of the investigation, the Association of the Journalists of Serbia published in the Dossier on murdered and missing journalists in Kosovo and Metohija, RTV Puls reported.
Head of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, Ambassador Jan Braathu said “that not much was done when it comes to the establishment of the Commission to investigate murdered and missing journalists”.
“We have some activities planned for the next years. The process is slow, but it is being worked on,” Braathu said.
Participants at the roundtable said that 24 cases of attacks against journalists were recorded this year, 13 of them are still under investigations.
“Journalism is a high risk profession, this is the stance of the police. Related to the increased number of attacks against journalists this year, we have made decision that attacks against journalists are investigated by the serious crimes departments,” said Deputy Director General of the Kosovo police, Naim Rexha.
