\n A court in Montenegro on Thursday sentenced an award-winning investigative journalist to one year in jail following a retrial on drug trafficking charges.\n<\/p>\n
\n Jovo Martinovic, who has reported widely on organised crime and war crimes for both local and foreign outlets, was sentenced in 2019 to a year and a half in prison over alleged links to a smuggling ring.\n<\/p>\n
\n Martinovic, who has denied the accusations, appealed the verdict, and an appeals tribunal ordered the retrial citing lack of evidence.\n<\/p>\n
\n At the time media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) slammed the ruling as a \"disturbing setback for press freedom\" in Montenegro.\n<\/p>\n
\n Also, Brussels warned the Balkan nation that restricting the press could imperil its bid to join the European Union.\n<\/p>\n
\n The journalist said earlier that his contacts with criminal circles were strictly professional in the context of reporting.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Thursday, Martinovic, 48, labelled his new verdict \"political and shameful\" and said he would appeal it.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Witnesses' testimonies were in my favour. All the evidence was in my favour. The court did not want to accept the evidence I proposed which shows that I was on a reporting mission.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The judgement was written a long time ago,\" he told reporters.\n<\/p>\n
\n However, Martinovic will not go to jail as he was already detained for nearly 15 months -- longer than his sentence -- while awaiting the first trial.\n<\/p>\n
\n Martinovic has worked for major international media including the BBC and the Financial Times.\n<\/p>\n
\n He won the 2018 Peter Mackler Award for his investigations, including work that exposed war crimes during and after Serbia's conflict with Kosovo in the 1990s.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Tuesday, RSF and seven other media freedom groups had urged Martinovic's acquittal.\n<\/p>\n
\n A new conviction would \"undermine media freedom\" in Montenegro and be incompatible with its EU accession, for which an \"independent and pluralist media is a key condition\", they said in a statement.\n<\/p>\n
\n Montenegro, home to 650,000 people, hopes to join the EU by 2025 and is under growing pressure to tackle organised crime and safeguard media freedom.\n<\/p>\n
\n Before Martinovic's arrest he had worked on stories about the notorious \"Pink Panther\" international jewel thieves gang made up of members mainly from the former Yugoslavia.\n<\/p>\n
\n Gang member Dusko Martinovic was sentenced to six years and three months in the trial. Six others were also convicted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A court in Montenegro on Thursday sentenced an award-winning investigative journalist to one year in jail following a retrial on drug trafficking charges. Jovo Martinovic, who has reported widely on organised crime and war crimes for both local and foreign outlets, was sentenced in 2019 to a year and a half in prison over alleged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-45615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n