"The HND is very unpleasantly surprised to see that journalists are still being sentenced to prison terms, although the Minister of Justice has publicly said on several occasions that defamation was decriminalised in the amended Criminal Code," the organisation said in a statement.
The statement said that the HND would continue demanding decriminalisation of defamation.
The Split County Court has recently upheld last year's verdict by the Split Municipal Court, which found Letinic guilty of slandering a businessman from Split in a television report in 2002 and sentenced her to two months' imprisonment with a probation period of one year.