Nova TV journalist Danka Derifaj learned through the media about an indictment filed by the Municipal State Attorney’s Office in Split against her, cameraman Petar Janjić and neighbour Branko Miodrag for the criminal offence of violating the inviolability of the home of Marko Perković Thompson in Split, telegram.hr reports.
The law firm representing Thompson and his family informed the public that the Municipal State Attorney’s Office in Split had filed an indictment against the journalist.
“I have not officially received the indictment and it is unbelievable that the State Attorney’s Office is engaged in prosecuting journalists. This resembles authoritarian systems, not a democratic state in the 21st century,” Danka Derifaj told N1.
As a journalist for RTL in 2021, after information emerged that Thompson was in a dispute with ten neighbours from his building in the Žnjan area of Split, she decided to cover the story. She went to the address and, as a journalist, accessed the roof of the building accompanied by tenants’ representative Branko Miodrag, which Thompson had turned into his private courtyard.
Thompson has owned a total of 713 square metres of the building since 2011. In the meantime, it emerged that around 1,800 square metres in the building had been constructed illegally and had until then been hidden inside the structure as “secret floors”. After Thompson learned that hidden floors existed beneath the property and land plot he owns, he initiated court proceedings that have been ongoing for several years.
He sued ten neighbours living on the second to fourth floors of the cascading building, demanding that they move out and pay compensation for using or renting those spaces, Slobodna Dalmacija reported four years ago. Derifaj later produced a report on the matter for RTL, and the state is now criminally prosecuting her over it.
More can be read on telegram.hr.