Dejan Anastasijević

He has also contributed to a number of local and foreign news media, including Slobodna Bosna (Sarajevo), Koha Ditore and Zeri (Pristina), The Guardian (London),  Die Zeit (Hamburg) and The Washington Post (Washington DC).

Anastasijević began his career with B92 Radio, covering the war in Vukovar (1991) and Eastern Bosnia (1992). In September of 1992, he joined the United Press International (UPI) bureau in Belgrade, where he remained until UPI’s bankruptcy in 1993. He then joined the VREME staff.

Anastasijević’s 1998 reports on atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo led to the Milošević regime bringing criminal charges against him for “spreading disinformation and aiding terrorists”.

In April of 1999, during the NATO bombing and Milošević’s crackdown on the media, Anastasijević fled to Vienna with his family. He worked for TIME magazine’s central and eastern Europe bureau until August 2002, when he moved back to Belgrade in time to cover Milošević’s downfall and subsequent transfer to the Hague war crimes tribunal.

In October 2002, Anastasijević was the first Serbian journalist to testify against Milošević in The Hague.

Since the end of the Yugoslav wars, Anastasijević has focused largely on security issues and organised crime in Serbia.  In April 2007, he and his family narrowly survived a hand grenade attack by unknown perpetrators. From September 2008 to September 2010, he was VREME’s correspondent in Brussels, Belgium.

Apart from purely journalistic work, Anastasijević has edited Out of Time (IWPR London, 2000), an acclaimed book on Serbian opposition. He is a recipient of a 2002 Nieman Fellowship for Journalists at Harvard University, two national press awards (NUNS and Dušan Bogavac), as well as the 2008 Oxfam Novib/PEN Award for achievements in human rights and the freedom of speech.

For his fellowship investigation, Anastasijević examined the murder of high-profile politicians, activists and underworld figures during the 1990s and revealed that a convicted murderer-turned-informer who had worked for the former Yugoslav security services remains at large in Serbia, despite being given a 20-year jail term.