Court ruling against Milosevic's widow overturned
The Appellate Court in Belgrade has overturned the first-instance verdict convicting former leader of the JUL party Mirjana Markovic to a year in prison.
Source: Tanjug
Markovic - the widow of former Serbian and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic - was first found guilty and sentenced in June last year, on charges of influencing a government commission in 2000 to illegally assign a state-owned apartment to her grandchild's nanny, the daily Blic is reporting.
In the ruling published on Tuesday on its website, the Appellate Court ordered the trial to be repeated before the Higher Court in Belgrade, in order to eliminate all illogical points from the verdict, as well as and violation of the criminal procedure.
By the abolished verdict sentenced former Secretary of the government of Serbia, Zivka "Cica" Knezevic to one and a half years in prison, while then director of Dipos Milos Loncar was sent to jail for one year on charges of abuse of office. Markovic was found to have incited both to commit the crime.
The original verdict was pronounced almost 15 years after the initiation of criminal proceedings, which will now be resumed with a retrial. Markovic was tried in absentia because she was inaccessible to the judicial authorities of Serbia.
Representatives of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation in 2010 announced that Markovic enjoys the status of a political refugee in that country and that she cannot be arrested on the Serbian Interpol notice, which was issued in 2005 and is still in effect.
