World

Serb Journalist Convicted Of Spying

July 26, 2000 / 6:17 PM EDT / AP

In a trial denounced by human rights groups, a military court convicted a Serbian journalist of espionage Wednesday for writing about Serb atrocities in Kosovo and sentenced him to seven years imprisonment.

Rights groups and media organizations quickly condemned the conviction of Miroslav Filipovic, a reporter for the independent Belgrade daily Danas, as part of a campaign by President Slobodan Milosevic's government to suppress dissent.

The court ruled that Filipovic gathered confidential military information for foreign organizations between May 1999 and May 2000, and convicted him of a lesser charge of spreading false information.

"Of course, we are terribly dismayed," said Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York. "But it is very much in keeping with Milosevic's desire to stamp out all independent voices in Yugoslavia."

Filipovic's reports included testimony from a Yugoslav army commander who admitted that he watched a soldier decapitate a 3-year-old ethnic Albanian boy in front of his family. Another described how tanks indiscriminately shelled a Kosovo Albanian village before paramilitary police moved in and massacred the survivors.

Filipovic's face was blank as he stood to hear the verdict. His wife, Slavica, who was inside the courtroom, seemed pale. After leaving the court, she said her husband was no spy.

"This is not justice," she said. "This is a political verdict."

Filipovic said he would serve the sentence as a "stable person." His lawyers promised to appeal the verdict.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said the sentence was in keeping with "the Milosevic regime's typical attitude" to suppress Serbia's independent media "threatening or even beating those brave enough to report the truth among their own journalist corps."

Amnesty International spokeswoman Judith Arenas said Filipovic was arrested for normal journalistic work and was denied a fair trial because the proceedings were partly secret.

In the trial, the prosecution charged that Filipovic's articles were false. It also brought as evidence of espionage articles by Filipovic that cited an alleged secret Yugoslav army intelligence report on atrocities against Kosovo Albanians during last year's 78-day NATO bombing campaign.

Prosecutors also showed military reports on army formations and troop movements that coincided with details published in some of Filipovic's articles.

In his ruling, Judge Radenko Mladenovic said an examination of Filipovic's articles indicated the charges were valid and that Filipovic was never given any official military records but personally collected secret data.

Filipovic was also accused of exposing army activities in Sandzak, a Muslim-dominated region in southwestern Serbia, and reporting on troop movements and army morale in Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the two-republic Yugoslav feeration.

He claimed his information came from public records and was therefore not secret. He was arrested in May at his home in the central Serbian town of Kraljevo.

Milosevic's regime has intensified its crackdown on independent media in recent months, banning and fining newspapers critical of his policies and detaining scores of independent reporters and opposition activists. There has been little outcry.

"It is the silence that really makes me feel angry," said Gordana Igric, Filipovic's editor at the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which published some of Filipovic's articles. "For so many years everyone is screaming that the Serbs should do this and that to become democratic and when one guy speaks out and is punished, people don't care."