Kosovo Remands Serb War Crimes Suspect in Custody

Pristina Basic Court on Monday remanded Goran Stanisic in custody for a month after he was detained at the Jarinje border crossing between Serbia and Kosovo on Saturday.

The Kosovo Special Prosecution said Stanisic is suspected of forced displacement, robbery, intimidation and involvement in the killing of "dozens of people" in the village of Sllovi/Slovinje in the Lipjan/Lipljan region of central Kosovo during an offensive by Serbian forces on April 15 and 16, 1999.

Serbian officials have condemned the arrest.

The Serbian government's office for Kosovo said on Sunday that Stanisic was displaced from Kosovo in 1999 but regularly travelled back there and had faced no problems until he was detained at the weekend.

Marko Djuric, the head of the government's office for Kosovo, claimed that this was another attempt by the Kosovo authorities to "create a fake picture of Serbs as criminals", Danas newspaper reported.

Djuric also alleged that the arrest was "another in a series of examples of intimidation of Serbs in order to complete the ethnic cleansing of the southern Serbian province".

Serbia refuses to recognise Kosovo as an independent state and still regards it as its province.

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