Accused in General Staff buildings case plead not guilty

BELGRADE - The accused in the General Staff buildings case - Serbian Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic, secretary at the Culture Ministry Slavica Jelaca, Acting Director of the National Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments Goran Vasic and Acting Director of the Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade Aleksandar Ivanovic - pleaded not guilty in the Special Court in Belgrade on Wednesday, denying all counts of the indictment.

Asked if he wished to invoke immunity, Selakovic said he did not, to which the judge replied he would write to the government of Serbia, which he said needed to take a position on the matter as it might request immunity for Selakovic.

The suspects are charged with abuse of office and forgery of official documents in the process of abolishing the status of cultural good attributed to the army General Staff buildings in central Belgrade.

At a December 4 hearing before the Public Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime, Selakovic said the case was a politically fabricated narrative of blockaders within the state system and within the Public Prosecutor's Office for Organised Crime.

Selakovic said the Prosecutor's Office was an "autoimmune disease in Serbia" and that its actions were destroying what was legal, lawful and constitutional in the Serbian society.

Selakovic's attorney Vladimir Djukanovic said at the time he had requested that the Prosecutor's Office halt the proceedings as a new law passed by the Serbian parliament declared null and void a decision from 2005 under which the General Staff buildings had the status of cultural good.

In November last year, Serbian MPs passed a special law on revitalisation and development of the location of the buildings in a project that was described as being in the general interest of Serbia's overall economic development.

The location was bombed in the 1999 NATO aggression on FR Yugoslavia, which Serbia was a part of at the time.