Indictment brought against Jakov Surać for beating journalist Hrvoje Bajlo

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Source/Author: CJA
Source/Photo: CJA

ZADAR, 29.07.2018. – Zadar District Attorney brought an indictment against Jakov Surać, the former NK Zadar footballer, because of physical attack against Hrvoje Bajlo, the journalist and the owner of Zadar News portal.

Surać is accused of causing Bajlo severe physical injuries and death threatening on June 24 at 19:39 in Zadar. The indictment states that crime against life and body – severe injuries – and crime against freedom of a person – threat -have been committed. The indictment also states that the crime committed has been connected to the work the journalist performed. As a precaution measure, it was suggested for Surać the restrain order for less than 50 meters and ban of communication with Bajlo.

We want to remind that Hrvoje Bajlo has been following ways the town of Zadar has been managed and has documented links between Zadar political, business, sports and law social spectrum. According to Bajlo’s report the physical attack was preceded by insulting him. The attacker threatened him to “cut his head off” if he went on writing about his friends Zdravko Livaković, Božidar Kalmeta and HDZ. It was followed by punches on his head and body, he was thrown to the ground, beaten again; he finally fainted. In the Emergency Hospital in Zadar he was diagnosed with broken right arm and several head and body injuries, qualified as severe.

Jakov Surać was at June 26 released from the custody at the regional Court in Zadar. The decision was signed by Hrvoje Visković, an investigative magistrate. He stated that reason for keeping a person in custody is „doubt for the perpetrator to commit the crime again“, but he decided to apply to mitigate measure of restrain. Judge Visković said for the Croatian News Agency that he „did not believe there was a threat of repeating the crime“.

The attack against Hrvoje Bajlo, the journalist, was condemned by the Croatian Journalists’ Association (CJA), Regional Platform for advocating media freedom and safety of journalists, European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and Harlem Désir, OSCE media representative. .

Even in previous years Hrvoje Bajlo was threatened and insulted because of his uncompromising work. In spite of the fact, all of those threats were reported to the police none of them have not been solved yet.

Source: CJA, Index.hr