Serbian Tabloid Criticised for Airing Criminal's Claims

Serbia's pro-government weekly newspaper Ekspres has published an interview with Sreten Jocic, a.k.a. Joca Amsterdam, a convicted criminal, in which he accused Aleksandar Rodic, publisher of the rival daily tabloid Kurir, of working to bring down President Aleksandar Vucic.

Jocic, who was convicted of incitement to murder, also accused Dragan Djilas, the former Democratic Party leader - who is reportedly mulling returning to politics - of plotting Vucic's assassination.

The article comes after Rodic, Kurir's owner, announced that he intended to enter politics. In an open letter published on June 7, the former ally and friend of Vucic accused the Serbian President of authoritarian rule and "abducting" the state.

Djilas, who was also Mayor of Belgrade before quitting politics in 2013, recently published an article in the weekly NIN presenting his economic plans, and on June 9 on TV N1 refused to exclude running for the Belgrade mayor's position once again.

His appearance on N1 looked like part of a low-level pre-election campaign that began at the end of April, observers said.

Ekspres is owned by Goran Veselinovic, one of President Vucic's close associates. Ekspres's editor-in-chief, Ivan Cvejic, did not answer BIRN's queries about the interview by the time of publication.

However, in an interview with TV Pink, he defended the editorial decision to give Jocic a platform.

"I think he shed new light on some situations that had remained unresolved, unfinished, mysterious," Cvejic said.

Slavisa Lekic, president of the Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia, NUNS, condemned the paper for giving such space to a convicted criminal's unsupported accusations.

"Practically everything published in Ekspres is a...