Srpska Lista party

Responding to calls to dismiss a Kosovo Serb government minister, Goran Rakic, head of the Belgrade-backed Srpska Lista party, after his controversial statements, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti on Thursday said sacking him would not help anything.

"The issue is not Rakic. Dismissal would turn him into an issue," Kurti said on Thursday, ahead of municipal elections due on Sunday.

Ivan Todosijevic, a Kosovo Serb MP from the Belgrade-backed Srpska Lista party, did not appear on Wednesday at noon as ordered by the court to begin his two-year prison sentence for inciting ethnic, racial or religious intolerance.

Florent Gashi, spokesperson for the Kosovo Correctional Service told BIRN that "the person in question so far has not appeared to serve his sentence".

Milan Radoicic, who was wanted for arrest as the alleged leader of an organised criminal group responsible for the murder of political party leader Oliver Ivanovic in January 2018, has returned home to Serb-majority northern Kosovo after being on the run for more than two years, police told BIRN.

Milan Radoicic, vice-president of the Srpska Lista party. Photo courtesy of N1.

"The Special Prosecution requested the withdrawal of the warrant and the court, acting upon the request, has lifted it," Kurtaj, the presiding judge in the Ivanovic murder case, told BIRN.

The prosecution declined to comment, saying that "this is an internal issue".

Preliminary results from Sunday's snap elections in four municipalities in northern Kosovo show that candidates from the Belgrade-backed Srpska Lista party secured an expected landslide victory, with each of them taking over 90 per cent of the votes.

At a meeting of Kosovo's Central Election Commission on Tuesday, Vetevendosje refused to vote in favour of certifying candidates from the Srpska Lista party to run in the May 19 polls, arguing that three of them had breached the constitution by resigning as mayors of the same municipalities in which they want to run for office again.

The meeting of the Kosovo government on Thursday. Photo: The office of Kosovo PM

Hoxhaj said that Kosovo Serbian political representatives in the Belgrade-backed Srpska Lista party, as well as state officials in Serbia, had long hidden the truth and denied proven crimes committed by Serbia in its former province.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci's office on Thursday said that he will not appoint Radomir Laban to the country's Constitutional Court until "competent security and judicial institutions conduct a full check-up" of his background.

"Due to suspicions regarding Laban's past, the President of Kosovo will not sign his appointment," Thaci's office told Radio Free Europe.