Serbia Arrests Two ex-Spies over Journalist's Murder

Serbian police on Tuesday said they had arrested two former intelligence officers suspected of involvement in the murder of journalist Slavko Curuvija, a fierce critic of the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

"Former senior officers of the State Security Service Ratko Romic and Milan Radonjic were arrested" in an ongoing investigation into the murder of Curuvija, a police spokeswoman told Agence France Presse providing no further details.

Local media had recently reported that a new witness had appeared in the case and that the authorities were close to bringing charges against Curuvija's assassins and those who had ordered the murder.

Serbia's powerful Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and special prosecutor for organised crime Miljko Radisavljevic were to address the press later Tuesday about the case, government's media office said.

Curuvija was shot dead in front of his central Belgrade house in April 1999, during NATO's bombing campaign against the former Yugoslavia over Kosovo.

At the time, he was the editor and owner of Dnevni Telegraf and Evropljanin, two of the leading independent publications in the country then made up of Serbia and Montenegro.

Curuvija's murder was widely blamed on Milosevic's secret police. His family has accused Milosevic of personally ordering the murder.