Ten months have passed since the leader of GI SDP Oliver Ivanovic was shot six times in the back on January 16th early in the morning on his way to work, in front of his party premises in North Mitrovica. The perpetrators and instigators still remain unknown, however, the public has learned that the „reward“ for information about the murder has doubled to €20,000.
Two official investigations are underway in Belgrade and Pristina. The two Presidents, Aleksandar Vucic and Hasim Thaci announced several times that results of the investigation will be made public and provided specific deadlines.
Instead, the information started arriving from the Serbian tabloid newspapers more intensely as of this summer – this information was funneled in two mutually opposed directions. The Kosovo media are also leading their own investigation, including Radio Television Kosovo, which recently provided information about the alleged involvement of BIA (Serbian Intelligence Agency), at least one Serbian official (Director of Kosovo Office Marko Djuric) and Oliver Ivanovic’s partner – Milena Popovic in the case.
Popovic, who has been working in the cabinet of Serbian Prime Minister, Ana Brnabic since late spring, made several media appearances in the last few months in which she discussed Ivanovic’s murder repeatedly claiming to be leading her own private investigation.
„All contact with Oliver in the past years went through me,“ she said recently from the Happy TV studio, adding that she has „a good grounds for it“.
„EULEX a possible murderer?“
Furthermore, she made some very strong allegations. While mentioning the role of EULEX and the perpetrators of the murder, she, however said: „So, we can think in that direction, when I think about his possible murderers.“
Shedding light on the murder will be moved from the pages of the tabloids to a university classroom of the Law Faculty this month, as Ivanovic’s partner is planned to give a lecture entitled “THE MURDER OF OLIVER IVANOVIC” and “WOMEN IN POLITICS” on November 23rd in the Faculty of Law in Kragujevac.
The news of this lecture was met with an avalanche of negative comments, to which Popovic has been confronted with since she was installed in a new post and after she accompanied the President of Serbia, who laid a wreath at the place her husband was murdered and followed the President to the central stage, where she listened to his speech from the first row while standing next to Srpska Lista officials.
Poštovani studenti,
budući advokati, sudije, tužioci,
učinite da učionica B117 ostane prazna i tako pokažite da ste dostojni buduće profesije. pic.twitter.com/hiEnT4imqt— Tatjana Vojtehovski (@TVojtehovski) 12. новембар 2018.
A well-known and influential Serbian journalist Tatjana Vojtehovski invited the students to boycott the lecture, emphasizing that „future judiciary members of this country (Serbia) must know that the details of the murder are collected in prosecutorial investigations“.
„Everything else is a reality (media show),“ Vojtehovski said.
GI SDP sends an open letter to international representatives in Pristina: What has been done?
Ivanovic’s associates, family members and friends lit candles at the site of his murder – as they do every 16th of the month.
„Public political bickering, spins and reality shows continue and the main issues and topics remain unfinished and unanswered“ – they emphasized.
Ivanovic’s party sent an open letter to all international representatives in Pristina yesterday, reminding them that 10 months have passed since the murder, asking what they have done to solve it and to find the perpetrators.
„We ask them to use their diplomatic immunity and influence on these institutions and reveal any information on the course of the investigation, who ordered the murder and who murdered Oliver Ivanovic. Who was bothered by Oliver Ivanovic and why?“ – they wrote in the letter.
When asked by the journalists whether their equipment and receivers have been returned, Ivanovic’s first party associate, Ksenija Bozovic, replied that they had not been returned yet, despite the fact that they had sent daily requests for their equipment to be returned.
„However, after our statement that we will probably send our equipment, when it is returned, to a foreign lab, where we will try to extract the recordings which we were not allowed to do on the day of the murder, not only did we not get the equipment, but we also did not receive an answer to the question why our equipment has not yet been returned,“ Bozovic said.
Oliver Ivanovic was the most prominent Kosovo Serb leader in the last 20 years. Ivanovic was a deputy in the Serbian Coalition for Return in Kosovo’s transitional institutions and the State Secretary at the Ministry of Kosovo and Metohija of the Government of Serbia. When he was killed he was a member of the Municipal Assembly of North Mitrovica. This MA did not hold a commemorative session. He was buried in the Alley of Meritorious Citizens in Belgrade. Months before the murder he was severely targeted and attacked as a traitor of the Serbian nation by the pro-governmental local and national media, Srpska Lista and SNS high-ranking state leadership and activists.
„They did everything they could to me, they just didn’t shoot at me. I think it would be wrong,“ Ivanovic said a few months before he was murdered.
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
