Kosovo Serb Acquitted of War Crimes Despite Supreme Court Ruling

Kosovo's Supreme Court has ruled that two court verdicts wrongly found Serb fighter Milorad Zajic not guilty of committing war crimes against civilians and violating the Geneva Conventions, but his acquittal stands because the Supreme Court cannot order a retrial.

Zajic was acquitted by the Basic Court in Peja/Pec in March 2019 of killing two people and expelling ethnic Albanians from a village during the Kosovo war in 1998.

The Court of Appeals then upheld the verdict of acquittal in October 2019.

The indictment had claimed that in June and July 1998, Zajic took an active role in organised attacks by Serbian forces on the ethnic Albanian-populated village of Dush, near Kline/Klina, around 60 kilometres west of Pristina.

The group consisted of members of "Serbian forces such as policeman, soldiers and Serbian paramilitaries" as well as Serbs from the village of Dush.

A Court of Appeals judge said the reason for Zajic's acquittal was trial witnesses' "contradictory" testimonies.

But the Supreme Court argued that Zajic had incriminated himself with his own testimony, indicating that "he was a member of the group that participated in carrying out war crimes at the time".

As this fact had not been considered in the previous verdicts, the Supreme Court ruled that this was "an essential violation of the provisions of criminal procedure".

However, experts pointed out that the Supreme Court cannot send a case for a retrial after a defendant has been already acquitted.

The Zajic ruling was made by the Supreme Court on February 18 this year, and was sent to BIRN Kosovo on Thursday in response to a freedom-of-information request.

NOTE: This article was amended on June 5, 2020 to clarify that Milorad Zajic's...

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