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Alert

Former head of Serbian radio and TV sentenced to ten years' imprisonment

(RSF/IFEX) - On 21 June 2002, RSF expressed satisfaction at the sentencing of the former head of Serbian radio and TV (RTS), Dragoljub Milanovic, to ten years in prison for being responsible for the death of 16 RTS employees killed in the 23 April 1999 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing of the station's offices.




Judge Radmila Dragicevic-Bicic said Milanovic had "not obeyed the order to evacuate the station's staff to temporary offices" and that he "knew the building could be a bombing target and that people would be killed." A legal inquiry was opened on 12 February 2001 in Belgrade to find out if Milanovic had been told NATO would bomb the building.

RSF hopes NATO will now investigate its own responsibility in the 23 April 1999 air strike during the offensive against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war.

On 22 November 2000, the organisation published a report entitled "Serbian broadcasting: Chronicle of martyrdom foretold" (see www.rsf.org), in which it accused RTS executives of deliberately keeping their staff in the dark about the imminent bombing.

At the same time, the victims' families took their case to the European Court of Human Rights and sued NATO's 17 member-states who are also signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights (Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom).

The court rejected their suit on 19 December 2001, stating that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was not under the jurisdiction of the sued states and that the Convention did not apply to extra-territorial actions by the 41 Council of Europe member-states that ratified it.