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Serbia: Journalists investigated for ŽwarmongeringŽ
[ADN Kronos] Serbia's special prosecutor for war crimes has opened an investigation against a number of journalists suspected of 'warmongering' during the conflict triggered by the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.The prosecutor's spokesman Bruno Vekaric said on Tuesday that a sector of the media behaved "contrary to the rules of the profession" and some individuals would be investigated in connection with war crimes in Vukovar in Croatia and Zvornik in Bosnia. "We now have a judicial truth about Zvornik and Vukovar, indictments which have proven crimes, and it is a duty of the prosecutor when someone says that he was incited to crime by media, to check what is behind it," Vekaric told Beta news agency. "It is in the phase of a serious analysis, we are at the beginning of a very difficult job, but it seems we have managed to connect causes and consequences," Vekaric explained. Several members of Serbia's paramilitary units have been sentenced recently for crimes in Vukovar and Zvornik to over 100 years in jail and some of the defendants claimed they were prompted to commit crimes by warmongering media reports. Vekaric said it was an elementary duty to "press criminal charges if it is determined that there were elements of a criminal act". Serbian media reported that the main targets of the investigation were Belgrade dailies Politika and Vecernje novosti as well as Serbian television and national news agency Tanjug, which were the mouthpieces of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. The Yugoslav wars were a series of violent conflicts in the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) that took place between 1991 and 2001. Posted by: Fred 2009-06-11 |
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