VELIKA HOCA, 23.08.2018. – The Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS) marked the 20th anniversary of the disappearance of two Serbian Radio Pristina journalists at the place where they went missing outside the Kosovo town of Velika Hoca on Tuesday, saying that there has been no information about their fate.
UNS recalled that Ranko Perenic and Djuro Slavuj went to the Zociste monastery on August 21, 1998 to interview monks who had been abducted and later released by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) just before they disappeared.
The police and prosecutors have released no information about possible interviews of suspects after their car and equipment were found in the Orahovac area and no one talked to their families, UNS said in a press release.
Perenic’s wife Snezana said she has had no information about her husband in 20 years, adding that she has demanded a re-opening of the investigation. UNS said the Perenic family learned in 2017 that the EULEX rule of law mission in Kosovo had closed its investigation in 2013. EULEX Prosecutor Maurizio Salustro wrote in his explanation that the two journalists were taken away by armed men bearing KLA insignia.
UNS said it had contacted the OSCE mission in Belgrade, where Salustro is employed, requesting a meeting but never received a response.
The Kosovo Serb List party said that this is the kind of case that has to be solved if Serbian-Albanian relations are to improve.
A Serb List press release said that the silence of the international community and institutions in Pristina will not stop it from recalling the disappearance of the two journalists, recalling that the memorial plaque at the scene of the abduction is destroyed every year.
