Court confirms verdict for suspects for police stoning

BELGRADE - The Belgrade Appellate Court confirmed the verdict of four months of imprisonment each for three defendants charged with stoning the police cordon guarding the Belgrade Bajrakli Mosque in the night between March 17 and 18, 2004.

The sentences were confirmed for Milos Radisavljevic as one of the leaders of the Alcatraz football fan group, his father Rade and Bojan Hrvatin.

The suspects were sentenced by the first-instance ruling for stoning police officers and breaking up the police cordon near the Bajrakli Mosque when two members of the Interior Ministry were seriously injured.

Although the trial was reported in the media as the incident of burning the Bajrakli Mosque, the indictment did not charge any of the suspects with arson; instead, the charges covered the criminal act of participation in group violence.

During the trial, Belgrade Mufti Muhamed Jusufspahic testified for Radisavljevic's defence and claimed that the suspects did not set fire to the mosque and that they were trying to help prevent riots.

In case of Rade radisavljevic, the court revoked the previously pronounced suspended sentence for the duration of six months and pronounced a consolidated sentence of eight months of imprisonment.

Hrvatin also received a consolidated sentence of 15 years of imprisonment as he had previously been found guilty of the murder of a football fan onboard a train.

In the night between March 17 and 18, 2004, protests broke out in Belgrade over the pogrom of Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija launched by Albanian extremists on the same day.

In just two days, 12 Serbs were murdered and over 4,000 more were injured in the southern Serbian province. In this period, six cities and nine...