BELGRADE, 26.06.2018. – Any engagement by politicians in the investigations and the work of relevant institutions in cases related to the attacks on journalists threaten their safety, media group has said on Monday.
The gathering of the Working Group for Journalists’ Safety mostly focused on the recent case of a reporter who went missing for 40 hours in mid-June, allegedly kidnapped, released, questioned first as a victim and then charged with false report of adduction.
Dragan Janjic, from the Independent Association of Journalists in Serbia (NUNS), said he had no objections to the work of the state institutions in the case of his colleague Stefan Cvetkovic, but resented the fact that leading politicians had expressed their versions of the event and said what actually had happened before the end of the investigation.
“The way the politicians in Serbia get involved into the work of the institutions and inquires jeopardises the system and the safety of the journalists,” Janjic said.
He added that “that is not good because we can get into a situation in which the authorities can, past the institutions, charge us as they like for something we say.”
A lawyer from the Independent Associations of Vojvodina’s Journalists and a member of the Group Veljko Milic said that only the Prosecutor’s Office could inform the public about a criminal procedure, not the politicians or the police.
“The Office of the Prosecutors’ conduct an investigation and there is no room for the politicians in the criminal procedures, they are not spokespersons for either prosecution or police,” Milic added.
