Belgrade says that a Kosovo Albanian MI was arrested on suspicion of committing war crimes against Serbs, Pristina denies this as Serbian propaganda. The editor of Radio Goraždevac, Darko Dimitrijević, tells "Vreme" that accusations of war crimes affect ordinary citizens the most.
The Minister of Internal Affairs of Serbia, Ivica Dacic, announced on Saturday, October 12 that the MI arrested him at the Horgoš border crossing due to the existence of grounds for suspecting that he had committed a criminal offense war crime against the civilian population in 1999 Pristina.
He specified that the arrest was made early in the morning, based on the order of police officers of the Criminal Police Directorate, War Crimes Detection Service.
"The person of the MI was deprived of his freedom due to the existence of reasonable suspicion that he committed the criminal act of war crime against the civilian population by being in June 1999 in Pristina with several members of the so-called "The KLA, with the use of physical force, firearms and serious threats to life and limb, abducted the spouses of Serbian nationality, after which they took them to an improvised prison where they continued their physical and psychological abuse," said Dacic.
It said the person would be held for 48 hours.
"Due to the investigative actions being carried out in the Public Prosecutor's Office for War Crimes, we are unable to provide more details in order not to jeopardize the investigation," said the Minister of the Interior.
The Prosecutor's Office announced, and silence followed
Then the War Crimes Prosecutor's Office of Serbia reacted, which published the news about Saturday's arrest on its official website on Monday, October 14.
"The Public Prosecutor's Office for War Crimes issued an order to conduct an investigation against the MI suspect for the criminal offense of war crimes against the civilian population under Article 142, paragraph 1, of the Criminal Code of the FRY. The prosecutor's office proposed ordering custody for the suspect," the statement said.
After that, nobody from the state institutions announced about this arrest, and there were no reactions from Pristina either.
Pristina: Serbian institutions fabricated the news about the arrest
The silence was broken on Wednesday evening by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora of Kosovo announcing that there is a suspicion that Serbian institutions fabricated the news about the arrest of a Kosovo citizen MI who is allegedly accused of labor crimes.
"Koha" reports that the Kosovo Ministry claims that they failed to provide information about the case either through the Kosovo Liaison Office in Serbia, or from the diplomatic missions of the Quintus and EULEX countries.
"This development of events leaves room for doubt that the statements about such arrests are fabricated and that they have propaganda purposes of the government and state establishment of Serbia. However, in the coming days, it remains to be clarified whether it is the real arrest of a citizen of Kosovo with the initials MI or whether it is a deliberate action for the political and propaganda purposes of Serbia," the ministry stated.
Dimitrijević: Continuation of a kind of chaos in relations between Belgrade and Pristina
The editor of Radio Goraždevac, Darko Dimitrijević, in an interview for "Vreme", states that there is very little information about this case, and that for him this case is a continuation of a kind of chaos in the relations between Belgrade and Pristina.
"In Kosovo, we have many fabricated cases, primarily directed against people who are trying to return their property." They are arrested by the Kosovo police on charges of war crimes. The moment a displaced person comes to Kosovo and starts looking for his property, he is automatically a war criminal. And lately we have also had several arrests in Serbia, which in my view are a kind of countermeasure from Belgrade due to the aforementioned arrests in Kosovo," Dimitrijević points out.
All this shows that the relations between Belgrade and Pristina are constantly deteriorating, and that ordinary citizens will suffer the worst because of this.
"That is not good for either the Serbian or the Albanian people. Politicians do little to calm people down, to deal with the future, but much more deal with the past. It is obvious that it is revenge. The Government of Kosovo implements the party's program of Self-Determination and arrests Serbs, while on the other hand we have Belgrade's revanchism due to many scandalous processes that are being conducted in Kosovo. That is not good at all," Dimitrijević pointed out.
Vremen's interlocutor mentioned the two most prominent processes, which he says are scandalous, and which are currently being conducted in Kosovo.
The Djokovic case
The first is the case of Milorad Djokovic, who lived in Kosovo for 15 years and was available non-stop to the Kosovo police, and no criminal proceedings were initiated against him during that period. However, the moment he won a case before the High Court in Pristina against the local government, he was declared a war criminal.
Đoković lived alone on his property in Vitomorica, and in recent years he sued the local authorities over the plot of land he received from the municipality of Peć in the 1990s and on which he built a house. Local authorities tried to confiscate part of Djokovic's estate, but the High Court of Kosovo ruled in his favor.
The Pantic case
The second is the case of 85-year-old Tomislav Pantić. He was arrested at the Jarinje crossing after two years of demanding the return of the property that was occupied by one of the veterans of the Kosovo Liberation Army. In the end, they accused him of stealing sheep.
"It is so frivolous, but it reflects Pristina's policy towards those who try to recover what was stolen from them," Dimitrijević says.
And he concludes: "As a consequence of that, we have unreasonable attempts by Belgrade to retaliate for something like that." The biggest victims in such a chaotic relationship between Belgrade and Pristina are ordinary people, primarily returnees, who cannot exercise their right to their property and who, in addition to everything, are accused of the most serious crimes."
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