(CPJ/IFEX) – The following is a 10 May 2000 CPJ press release: New York, 10 May 2000 — A Serb journalist who was detained in a wave of arrests on 8 May may face charges of espionage, according to news reports and CPJ sources in Belgrade. Miroslav Filipovic, a correspondent for the independent Belgrade daily […]
(CPJ/IFEX) – The following is a 10 May 2000 CPJ press release:
New York, 10 May 2000 — A Serb journalist who was detained in a wave of arrests on 8 May may face charges of espionage, according to news reports and CPJ sources in Belgrade. Miroslav Filipovic, a correspondent for the independent Belgrade daily Danas, was one of at least eight journalists arrested in a crackdown on independent and opposition journalists.
Filipovic was arrested at around 5 p.m. local time on 8 May in the central Serbian town of Kraljevo. According to family members, plainclothes representatives of the Serbian State Security Service (RDB) spent three hours in the journalist’s apartment, questioning Filipovic and searching through his professional and personal documents. The officers took three floppy discs and the hard drive from his computer, and almost 100 pages of
documents. They also confiscated the journalist’s passport, address book, business cards, his diary, and other personal papers.
According to local news reports, the investigating judge at a hearing held yesterday at the Kraljevo Municipal Court ruled that Filipovic’s case be transferred to a military court in the southern town of Nis. In an article in the Belgrade daily Danas, Filipovic’s lawyer, Goran Draganic, was quoted as saying that authorities may bring charges against his client for “endangering the constitutional order and security of Yugoslavia.” Other news sources report that Filipovic could face charges of espionage and spreading lies.
Filipovic is a regular contributor to Agence France-Presse and the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). He is also associated with the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. In recent contributions to the IWPR, Filipovic reported on the Yugoslav security services, army and police, including accounts of repression and
atrocities by Serb soldiers against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
