Kosovo Serb Ex-Minister Indicted for ‘Inciting Hatred’

The Kosovo prosecution announced on Monday that it has indicted ex-minister Ivan Todosijevic, alleging that he "deliberately publicly incited and spread hate, division and intolerance between national, racial and ethnic communities in Kosovo".

The indictment comes three months after Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj fired Todosijevic, a member of the Belgrade-backed Srpska Lista political party, from his position as minister of local government administration after he claimed that Kosovo Albanians fabricated crimes against them during the 1998-99 war while committing crimes against Serbs.

"The reason for the aggression in our country was the so-called humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo and the fabricated Recak [massacre in 1999], and the Albanian terrorists are the ones who made all this up and committed the biggest crimes in Kosovo," Todosijevic claimed.

Part of the justification for the NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia, which started in March 1999, was the killing of 45 Kosovo Albanians by Belgrade's security forces in the village of Recak/Racak in January that year.

NATO's 78-day military campaign, aimed at making Milosevic pull his forces out of Kosovo, is widely described in Serbia as the 'NATO aggression'.

"They [Kosovo Albanians] committed crimes before the NATO aggression, they killed good Serbian householders and policemen at their workplace," Todosijevic also said.

Haradinaj said at the time that such rhetoric "can't be justified" at a point when Kosovo was marking the 20th anniversaries of massacres committed by Serbian forces all over the country.

Prior to Todosijevic, Haradinaj fired another Kosovo Serb government official in March.

Deputy Justice Minister Vesna Mikic was dismissed for her comment accusing...

Continue reading on: