Serbian reporter jailed over murder report

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) -- A Serbian journalist sentenced in 1999 to imprisonment over a report suggesting a government official was linked to a murder was taken to jail this week more than a year after sentencing, Belgrade media said on Wednesday.

The independent news agency Beta quoted his wife as saying that journalist Zoran Lukovic went to a police station near Belgrade on Tuesday to register his car but did not return home.

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"Belgrade journalist Zoran Lukovic was sent (on Tuesday) to serve a five-month sentence in prison," Beta said.

Lukovic, a former journalist with the outspoken Belgrade daily Dnevni Telegraf, which was shut down under restrictive Serbian media legislation, was sentenced in March last year to five months in jail for "spreading false reports."

Then-Dnevni Telegraf owner Slavko Curuvija and fellow journalist Srdjan Jankovic were also sentenced to five months imprisonment at the same time.

Curuvija, a strong critic of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government, was shot dead a month later. Lukovic and Jankovic were spirited out of reach of Serbian authorities before they had to start serving sentences in July last year.

According to the daily Glas Javnosti, Lukovic returned to Serbia a few months ago after spending time in Yugoslavia's pro-Western republic of Montenegro and in the Bosnian Serb republic. The current whereabouts of Jankovic are not known.

A criminal suit against Dnevni Telegraf was filed by Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Milovan Bojic, who also heads a medical center in Belgrade, for suggesting the politician was involved in the murder of a doctor at his clinic.

Curuvija was gunned down outside his Belgrade apartment block three weeks into last year's March-to-June NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia during the Kosovo crisis.

Five days earlier, Serbian state television had broadcast a commentary by a pro-government daily accusing him of treason and of welcoming NATO bombs.

His daily was banned in 1998 for "spreading fear, panic, and defeatism" about possible NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia over its repression of the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo.

Dnevni Telegraf was re-registered in Montenegro, but when NATO started bombing, Curuvija stopped publishing to avoid subjecting his papers to war censorship.

The West has demanded Belgrade's information law be scrapped, saying it appeared to be aimed at silencing criticism of official policy.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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