Kosovo Court Reopens Sensitive Murder Trial Following BIRN Findings

The Basic Court at Peje/Pec in Kosovo has ordered the reopening of the trial for the murder of a 29-year-old following a series of dramatic developments in recent days that caught public attention.

"The main trial is reopened," Presiding Judge Violeta Husaj Rugova declared on Friday, explaining that further completion of "the criminal proceedings" was now necessary.

The decision comes days after the case's prosecutor reclassified the charge from "aggravated murder" to "accidental murder", sparking reactions from the family of the victim and the public in Kosovo - and also reflects new circumstances about the prosecutor.  

After BIRN Kosovo published a photo of the prosecutor, Agron Uka, with Besnik Berisha, the lawyer of the suspect, the Chief State Prosecutor, Aleksander Lumezi, excluded Uka from the case on suspicion of the improper handling of it. This led the Basic Court of Peja/ Pec to reopen the trial for further examination of the evidence.

"To prevent bias and avoid prejudice in the case of the murder of Agonis Tetaj, today I have decided to take the case off the prosecutor of the case … and reassign it to another prosecutor," Lumezi said on Thursday, a day after BIRN Kosovo published the photo.

Lumezi also asked the Peje/Pec Basic Court not to make a decision on the trial yet but to reopen the investigation to obtain new evidence. 

The indictment from the Peja/ Pec prosecution accused Shaban Gogaj of murdering Agonis Tetajt on September 23, 2018, at the Gogaj AG company premises.  

The initial indictment charged him with aggravated murder, claiming that after Gogaj spoke on the phone with an unmentioned person on the day of the murder, he took a Beretta revolver from the drawer and shot Tetaj dead on...