War Crimes Arrest Sparks Protest by Kosovo Serbs
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Photo illustration. Source: Kosovo Police/Facebook.
Kosovo Police said on Wednesday that they have arrested a Kosovo Serb male, identified only by the initials D.S., in the Serb-majority municipality of Gracanica, on suspicion of committing war crimes during the Kosovo war in 1998-99.
The police said in a statement that “evidence has been secured for the existence of a reasonable suspicion” that the suspect, who was a prison guard, was responsible for the “torture, physical and psychological violence, ill-treatment and inhumane and life-threatening mistreatment of Albanian prisoners” in prisons in Pristina and Lipjan/Lipljan in collaboration with other guards.
The suspect’s house was raided by police officers who said they seized a Zastava 9mm-calibre revolver, plus gun cartridges, a military knife and a metal bar as well as documents and a mobile phone as evidence.
While the police only identified the suspect by his initials, the Serbian government’s office for Kosovo confirmed his identity as Dragisa Milenkovic.
It said in a statement that he was arrested “as part of [Kosovo Prime Minister Albin] Kurti’s revenge plan against the Serbs, whose lives he is making miserable every day in order to force them to leave their centuries-old home”.
After Milenkovic’s arrest, local Serbs in Gracanica gathered to protest and blocked the road that connects Pristina to Gjilan/Gnilanje.
The situation has been tense in Kosovo since the end of May amid protests by locals in the Serb-majority municipalities in the north of the country, after a Serb boycott of local elections led to ethnic Albanian mayors being installed in the municipalities.
On Monday, hundreds of Kosovo Serbs in northern Kosovo, led by medical workers, marched from North Mitrovica to Zvecan, where workers from the Trepca mine joined them, demonstrating against recent arrests of Serbs suspected of attacks on Kosovo journalists during the protests.
On May 29, Serb protesters violently clashed with soldiers from NATO’s peacekeeping force KFOR, and 30 soldiers and around 50 protesters were injured.
Around 30 attacks against journalists have been recorded by the Association of Journalists of Kosovo during the continuing tensions, the most recent last Friday.
