Peja

Tijana Vasic, the former sister-in-law of Milan Ivanovic, told Belgrade Higher Court on Monday that the defendant was at home with his family when the massacre of Kosovo Albanians in which he was allegedly involved took place in April 1999.

The Prosecutorial Council of Kosovo, PCK, has cancelled the recruitment of professional associates in the prosecution offices of Gjakova/Djakovica, Peja/Pec and Prizren after BIRN reported that the chief prosecutor of Gjakova/Djakovica, Ramiz Buzhala, had leaked the questions.

The Kosovo prosecution said on Monday that police have arrested a man identified only by the initials M.D. on suspicion of committing war crimes in the Peja/Pec region of Kosovo in May 1999.

Svetomir Bacevic stands accused of seizing a 60-year-old ethnic Albanian civilian from her home in the village of Bellopje/Belo Polje in Kosovo's Peja/Pec municipality in the summer of 1998, according to the indictment which has been obtained by BIRN.

The Court of Appeals in Pristina on Monday rejected appeals from the defence and prosecution and upheld the 12-year sentence handed down to Zoran Djokic for war crimes against civilians in 1999.

"The verdict contains sufficient and convincing reasons for establishing the facts clearly," the court said in the verdict.

Kosovo civil society activists protested on Tuesday in front of the Kosovo Judicial Council in Pristina after a verdict handed down by a local court in the town of Peja/Pec sentenced a man to eight months and eight days in prison for sexually abusing a 15-year-old.

It was the morning of May 14, 1999 when Serbian forces rounded up Rexhe Kelmendi, his brother Dema and a few other relatives and neighbours in a house in the ethnic Albanian-populated village of Qyshk/Cuska.

Kosovo police have arrested a man named as Driton Podrimqaku after a citizen from the western Kosovo town of Peja/ Pec reported to BIRN about being the victim of usury - defined in Kosovo law as taking advantage of a person's economic circumstances to extract disproportionate services or rates of interest on loans.

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.

Pristina Basic Court found Zoran Djokic guilty on Thursday of war crimes against the ethnic Albanian civil population in the town of Peja/Pec during the Kosovo war in 1999 and sentenced him to 12 years in prison.