Kosovo Supreme Court Upholds Serb Ex-Policeman’s War Crimes Sentence
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Goran Stanisic at Pristina Basic Court in October 2021. Photo: BIRN.
Kosovo’s Supreme Court on Thursday made public its ruling confirming the sentencing of Goran Stanisic to 15 years’ imprisonment for war crimes against ethnic Albanian civilians in the town of Lipjan/Lipljan during the Kosovo war in 1999.
The Supreme Court ruling upheld the previous Court of Appeals verdict convicting Serb wartime reservist policeman Stanisic.
The court found that the previous verdict had “rightfully proved that the convict was one of the co-perpetrators of the murder” of one ethnic Albanian civilian on April 16, 1999 and of causing injury to another.
It explained that eyewitnesses told the court that they could identify Stanisic.
It also said that due to the laws in force in the time of the crime, Stanisic could not be sentenced to more than 15 years in prison.
Stanisic, who was a reservist policeman with the Serbian Interior Ministry, was found guilty of involvement in the murders of 13 civilians.
He was initially sentenced to 20 years in prison in October 2021 at Pristina Basic Court.
The court found that he committed his crimes on April 15-16, 1999, during a large-scale attack by Serbian military, paramilitary and reservist police forces on the Albanian civilian population in the villages of Sllovi and Terboc in the Lipjan/Lipljan municipality.
Presiding judge Valon Kurtaj said that he “participated in deportations, murder and violence against the Albanian civilian population”.
On April 15, 1999, he was among a group of uniformed men who killed five members of the Gashi family in the village of Sllovi/Slovinje.
Later that day, Stanisic was involved in another murder in the village, and was one of several men who took another six ethnic Albanians from a column of people who were leaving the village because of the attack by Serbian forces and killed them.
On April 16, 1999, Stanisic was involved in wounding one more civilian and murdering another, according to the verdict.
The Court of Appeals reduced his sentence by five years in November 2022.
Stanisic’s lawyer, Ljubomir Pantovic, told Serbian-language station Radio KIM on Thursday that the conviction could still be challenged again at the Constitutional Court.
“Kosovo’s Constitutional Court is the next and the final instance [to challenge the ruling]. There all legal remedies are exhausted, all possibilities to have this verdict revoked, disputed or amended,” Pantovic said.
