Ivan Todosijevic

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA - Former Zvecan mayor Ivan Todosijevic, a Kosovo-Metohija Serb convicted by a Pristina basic court to one year in prison for inciting "hatred, discord and intolerance" has been acquitted of all charges by Pristina's supreme court, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

The ruling is final, Nebojsa Vlajic told Tanjug.

Kosovo's Supreme Court said on Wednesday that it has overturned the verdict sentencing ex-minister Ivan Todosijevic to two years in prison for his comments about a January 1999 massacre of Kosovo Albanians in the village of Racak/Recak, which he claimed was staged.

Todosijevic was cleared of inciting ethnic, racial or religious intolerance with his comments.

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".

The news states that these are not new demands or blackmail, but demands that arise from signed agreements that Pristina has been obstructing or refusing to fulfill for years.

Serb judges in the town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo refused to work on Wednesday in protest after MP Ivan Todosijevic was convicted of ethnic, racial or religious intolerance for his comments about the January 1999 massacre of 45 Kosovo Albanians in the village of Racak/Recak, which he claimed was staged.

"It was agreed that the Court of Appeals in Pristina establish a panel made up of the majority of Serbian judges when it comes to verdicts within the majority Serb communities. In this case, that was not respected," Stano said.

On that occasion, he addressed a video posted on the Instagram profile "buducnostsrbijeav.

The head of the Serbia's government's office for Kosovo, Petar Petkovic, said on Wednesday that the confirmation of the two-year sentence handed down to Kosovo MP and former minister Ivan Todosijevic was a "shameful, unacceptable and political verdict".

As talks in Kosovo drag on between Albin Kurti's Vetevendosje movement and Isa Mustafa's Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, on forming a new coalition government, officials from Belgrade-backed Srpska Lista, the main Serbian party in Kosovo, have already taken up their new posts in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo.

"That is why this indictment does not present personal assault but an assault on the Serbs in general, primarily in the north of Kosovo and Metohija", Ivan Todosijevic, member of the Serb List leadership says, commenting on the indictment that Prishtina authorities had raised against him as a consequence of his denying Racak massacre.