(Credit: the Monitor, screenshot)

Montenegro journalist Petar Komnenic must “serve four months in prison for libel” over a 2007 story for The Monitor magazine, Reuters reported.

His article claimed that Montenegrin “authorities… had placed a number of senior judges under illegal surveillance.”  According to Reporters without Borders,Komnenic “presented all of his evidence in court, including a copy of email exchanges and a statement by one of the judges involved. But the file containing the evidence misteriously disappeared.”

Reuters noted that Komnenic “works as a stringer for Reuters.”

Reporters without Borders called the libel sentence a “test for EU mebership” for Montenegro and said in a statement the group is “extremely disappointed and disturbed.”