Original article (in Serbian) was published on 15/03/2023
“EXCLUSIVE – Documents of German experts in public for the first time”, writes the tabloid Kurir on today’s front page, thus announcing the text of the report of experts from Wiesbaden on the murder of Zoran Djindjic. Anyone who bought this tabloid today to read this report spent 50 dinars in vain because they could have read it for free – it existed on Pescanik’s website for years. A similar method of deceiving readers is used by the Serbian telegraph, whose front page today announces the testimony of Milorad Ulemek Legija about the murder of Curuvija, which was “hidden for years” and which is announced on the website with the pretentious words “We are revealing”. The “revelation”, in this case, meant googling since Legija’s statement in question was published a week ago by Veran Matic’s web portal, javniservis.net.
On today’s front page, Kurir “lures” readers with the promise that it offers “exclusive documents by German experts”, that is, experts’ report on the murder of Zoran Djindjic, which was “read during the trial”.
It is true that it was read during the trial, but not that it is exclusive – the text of the report can be found on the Pescanik website, in the section called “Transcripts from the trial for the assassination of Zoran Djindjic”.
The report, the details of which are presented by Kurir in today’s issue, was read on October 6, 2006, the 110th day of the trial, which was open to the public. In it, experts from the German Institute for Criminalistic Techniques from Wiesbaden stated that Djindjic was killed by a bullet fired from the window of a building in Admiral Geprat Street, while the other bullet hit his bodyguard Milan Veruovic. The path of that bullet is also described, which, as they assume, exploded after hitting the stone ledge next to the door of the Parliament and caused injuries to Djindjic’s thigh. The experts also stated that there is no indication that a third bullet was fired.
Kurir quotes this verbatim as written in the report, and photos of this original document are attached to the text as proof. However, what is written in the original document is not exclusive because the report was already read in court 16 years ago, its findings were quoted countless times in the media over the years, and above all – they were part of the verdict for the assassination of the prime minister. The text of the expert testimony, word for word, can be found among the aforementioned transcripts from that day.
Being aware that these are not exclusive documents that they announced on the front page, they lessen the issue in the text and state that the exclusives are actually photographs:
“Kurir came to the findings of the German experts, which is known to the public – it was presented publicly during the trial – but in this voluminous documentation there are photos that have not been seen before, and which we are publishing exclusively today”.
Those photos were in experts’ report, which Kurir attaches to the text – a photo of the rifle from which the shot was fired, parts of the bullets, a photo of the damaged door, a view from the window at Admiral Geprat…
Serbian telegraph also has an already published, and at the same time, someone else’s exclusive. On today’s front page, they announce “testimony that has been hidden for years”, and the text, along with “We are revealing”, was also found during the previous evening in the online version on the website Republika (Serbian telegraph website).
The “revelation” that the Serbian telegraph uses to mislead the audience is not any “secret testimony” that was “hidden for years”, but a statement that is well known to the public.
Namely, it is about the testimony that Milorad Ulemek Legija gave to the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime in 2014 in connection with the murder of journalist Slavko Curuvija. With that statement, the former JSO commander identified four former members of the DB as organizers and executors, after which they were arrested.
Although the testimony document itself has not yet been made public, its content is well known because, as one of the key pieces of evidence, it is part of the indictment for the liquidation of the journalist. The indictment states the most important claims that Ulemek made on that occasion, which the Serbian telegraph now reports on the front page as a secret that has been kept for years.
In addition to the indictment, the media covered the details of that testimony over the years, especially in 2016 after the trial began and when Legija was brought to court to tell again what he claimed in the investigation. At that time, the media widely recalled his words from 2014, including the website of the Slavko Curuvija Foundation.
The only thing that is “new” lately is that the website javniservis.net, which is edited by Veran Matic, published the mentioned testimony last week, vividly retold based on Ulemek’s original story, in much more detail than could be read in public so far. You can find that text here.
At one point in the text, Republika mentions javniservis.net as its source, but from the title on the website and the claims on the front page in the press, it is incorrectly concluded that it is a secret, unknown testimony that this tabloid itself “discovered” these days.
By the way, this is not the first time that tabloids publish publicly available content as exclusive, and the Serbian telegraph is leading the way. Raskrikavanje has already written about such cases – for example, at the end of last year, they published letters from an American businessman about the energy crisis, stating that they were secret documents, although they are actually available on the Internet. We also wrote about when they published the “secret notes of Djindjic on Kosovo”, which have also long been available to the public as part of his legacy.
And the web portal FakeNews tragac has so far recorded several similar cases in the Serbian telegraph. In 2018, this tabloid published allegedly “secret Washington documents on the breakup of Yugoslavia”, which have been public since 1996. In the same year, they published an “exclusive” about the grave of Draza Mihailovic, which exists in public space for a whole decade. Recently, they also declared “exclusive” the letters that Slobodan Milosevic sent to Ratko Mladic and Alija Izetbegovic in 1995, even though they are letters available on the Internet for 27 years.
