Murdered Serb Politician’s Widow ‘Could Testify for Suspect’

Milena Ivanovic Popovic, the widow of murdered Kosovo Serb political party leader Oliver Ivanovic, was proposed on Wednesday as a witness in a defamation case launched by businessman Milan Radoicic, who has been accused of leading a criminal organisation that killed Ivanovic.

Radoicic, the vice-president of the main Belgrade-backed Kosovo Serb political party, Srpska Lista, is a businessman who is widely seen as the real power-holder in Serb-majority northern Kosovo.

Radoicic is suing Rada Trajkovic, another Kosovo Serb politician and a former minister in the Serbian government, for damaging his honour and reputation because she publicly connected him to the murder of Ivanovic. The case will be heard at the Higher Court in Belgrade in September this year.

Radoicic's legal representative filed the proposal at a preparatory hearing at the Belgrade court on Wednesday.

But Ivanovic Popovic told the Kossev news website that she does not know anything about the proposal.

"I do not have this information; when I am informed, I will decide. But for now I do not have this information, I am hearing it now for the first time," she said.

Radoicic's legal representative also proposed Goran Rakic, the president of Srpska Lista, as a witness.

Ivanovic, the leader of the Freedom, Democracy, Justice party, was gunned down in front of his party's office in Mitrovica in northern Kosovo on January 16, 2018.

According to an indictment issued in Kosovo, Milan Radoicic and another prominent Kosovo Serb, Zvonko Veselinovic, were the leaders of an organised criminal group responsible for Ivanovic's death.

They both fled to Serbia to avoid arrest and have denied wrongdoing.

Once seen as a hardline nationalist, Ivanovic had evolved...