Journalist shot and wounded in Montenegro

Olivera Lakic, a Montenegrin investigative journalist who has written about crime and corruption in the small Balkan country was shot and wounded by unidentified men on Tuesday night.

Lakic, a journalist for the Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti, was wounded in the right leg outside her home in the capital, Podgorica. She was taken to a hospital and was reported out of danger.

Police said the attack happened at around 9pm. Vijesti’s chief editor, Mihailo Jovovic, said Lakic told him a man approached her and shot her, while two other men ran away.

Prime Minister Dusko Markovic condemned the attack and urged a “swift and efficient investigation” to discover the motive as well as who might have ordered it.

The assault, is the second against a journalist in a month. Last month a bomb exploded near the home of a prominent journalist in the northern town of Bijelo Polje.

On 1 April, a car bomb exploded in front of the home of Sead Sadikovic, a journalist who reports on corruption and organised crime in Montenegro.

Luckily, he escaped uninjured but the Trade Union of Media of Montenegro warned that Sadikovic had received two additional threats in the last few months but the police had not taken any action.

Sadiković suspects the attack was manipulated by people from the Montenegrin ruling party, which he is highly critical of.

The EU, which Montenegro hopes to join by 2025, along with international human rights and media organisations have been insisting that the authorities solve a string of attacks against journalists and media organisations.

Many of the dozen or so assaults in the last 15 years, including the 2004 murder of editor Duško Jovanović, remain unresolved.