(RSF/IFEX) – On 13 June 2002, the daily newspaper “Dan” was ordered to pay Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic 15,500 euros (approx. US$14,600) in damages for causing him “moral anguish” by publishing newspaper articles which implicated him in a cigarette-smuggling racket. In a letter to Djukanovic, RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard condemned the verdict and noted that […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 13 June 2002, the daily newspaper “Dan” was ordered to pay Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic 15,500 euros (approx. US$14,600) in damages for causing him “moral anguish” by publishing newspaper articles which implicated him in a cigarette-smuggling racket.
In a letter to Djukanovic, RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard condemned the verdict and noted that former “Dan” editor Vladislav Asanin was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for libel in the same case in 2001. Ménard also called on Montenegro to bring itself “up to European human rights and press freedom standards if it wants to be admitted to the Council of Europe in September,” and urged the president to “depenalise defamation so that prison sentences are no longer passed on journalists who simply exercise their right to inform the public.”
Djukanovic sued Asanin and “Dan” after the newspaper published articles from the Croatian weekly “Nacional” in 2001 which reported on links between the Montenegrin president, Serbian prime minister Zoran Djinjic and underworld groups in a Balkan cigarette-smuggling racket. In addition to being ordered to pay damages, Asanin is currently awaiting the result of his appeal of his prison sentence to the Supreme Court.
RSF notes that a parliamentary commission of inquiry is looking into the facts behind the “Nacional” reports. At the end of May, a court in the Italian city of Bari began investigating Djukanovic for his alleged “underworld associations linked to international cigarette smuggling.” On 13 June, “Nacional” editor-in-chief Ivo Pukanic told the Italian press he had been summoned to give evidence in the investigation.
Montenegro’s libel law provides for three-month to three-year prison sentences and also implicates the editors-in-chief of newspapers that are found guilty of libel.
