Prosecutor

Prosecutors have finished investigating the 1999 assassination of prominent journalist and government opponent Slavko Curuvija, one of the most notorious crimes of the late Milosevic era.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ has taken the initiative to launch an investigation into a prosecutor and three judges who issued court orders for the arrest and freezing of assets of graft suspects in the Dec. 17 and Dec. 25 investigations, overruling the country’s top judicial body that had dismissed the need for such an investigation.

The two prosecutors investigating the Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party in order to determine whether it constitutes a criminal organization are pushing ahead with the depositions of members of the party as the expiration of the 18-month period of their pre-trial custody is set to expire and they may have to be released.

A re-examination of the degree certificates of the directors and doctors at the country’s public hospitals, which was launched at the end of last year, has led to dismissals of staff who were found to have secured their positions with bogus qualifications, Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis said on Friday.

Prosecutors have ordered that a police officer who injured a protester during last year’s Gezi demonstrations in Ankara be searched for until 2028, the time limit of the statute of limitations for the crime.

Mustafa Namlı sustained permanent damage to his left-eye after being hit by a police tear gas canister during protests on June 1, 2013, in Ankara’s Kızılay Square.

BELGRADE - The High Court in Belgrade has placed three people in 30-day custody on suspicion of spreading panic via social media networks during the recent state of emergency by posting false information about the number of fatalities caused by the floods.

The Ankara Public Prosecutor’s Office is again investigating all previous allegations and cases against Fethullah Gülen, a U.S.-based Islamic scholar and erstwhile ally of the government, including cases in which he was acquitted.

KRUPANJ - Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic on Tuesday said that he is satisfied with the government's reaction in defending the country from the recent catastrophic floods, but added that the Prosecutor's Office has already filed a request for information to be collected on potential criminal responsibility of those who at the time failed to act according to the law.

Serbia's justice system is still influenced by the executive, while many judges and prosecutors believe it does not make decisions independently, a survey by the Nis-based NGO Center for Human Rights shows.

When asked whether they believe that they were independent of parliament, 75 per cent of the prosecutors answered that they were not, as did 17 per cent of the judges.

The Supreme Judicial Council (VSS) has elected Petar Belchev as the new administrative director of the Sofia Regional Prosecutor's Office.

Belchev was backed by 17 votes, with one vote against, and five abstentions.

The other candidate, Asen Hristov, prosecutor at the Sofia Regional Prosecutor's Office, was backed by one VSS member, with six votes against and 16 abstentions.