23. 04. 2007

STATE TELEVISION BOMBING ANNIVERSARY

BELGRADE, 23 April 2007 (B92, FoNet) - Today marks the eighth anniversary of the deaths of 16 state television (RTS) employees killed during the 1999 NATO bombing.

Relatives and friends of the victims Sunday night placed wreaths on a monument built in honor of the RTS workers who died in the attack.

Former state television director Dragoljub Milanović, a figure close to the Milošević regime, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2002 “for disobeying the federal government’s orders to evacuate the state television headquarters on Aberdareva Street in Belgrade”.

Inspired by the event, journalist Zoran Janjić published a book entitled “The Silence on Aberdareva St.” in which he explored the circumstances surrounding the RTS bombing.

Janjić speculated that the workers in the building were consciously sacrificed during the 1999 bombing.

He offered proof that senior Serbian officials, acting in a joint criminal enterprise, purposely sacrificed the lives of 16 state television workers, in order to use their deaths as propaganda against the international community and NATO.

The state television said in a statement that Serbia’s Special Organized Crime Prosecution was given the book in July 2006, but to date failed to react to the claims Janjić made.