Prosecutors seek detention for former MUP member on suspicion of war crimes in Kosovo

2026-04-05 15:01:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Prosecutors seek detention for former MUP member on suspicion of war crimes in

Prosecutors in Kosovo requested on Sunday the detention of a former member of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP), who was arrested the day before on suspicion of war crimes against the civilian population in Kosovo during the 1998-99 war.

The arrest of the suspect on Saturday, identified only by the initials AD, prompted a reaction from Serbia, which described his detention in Kosovo as "politically motivated".

The Basic Court in Pristina must now decide on the prosecutors' request.

The Kosovo Special Prosecution Office said in a media release on Sunday that the suspect was a member of the Serbian MUP in Ferizaj and a traffic police officer in the Kaçanik region at the time he allegedly committed the crimes in March 1999 in the Ivaja hill and surrounding villages of the southern Kosovo city.

He is suspected of "in collusion with other yet unidentified persons from the Serbian police and military forces, on 09.03.1999, during an organized military police action against the Albanian civilian population, forcing residents to leave their homes, which were then burned and destroyed."

He is also suspected of beating and torturing “in a brutal, inhuman, physical and psychological manner” and causing “serious bodily injuries” to 13 civilians during interrogation at the police station in Kaçanik.

These civilians were among 91 men that Serbian forces had separated from around 400 men, women, elderly people and children rounded up to be taken to the police station in Kaçanik, according to the Prosecution.

The Office for Kosovo in the Serbian Government said in a response on Saturday that the arrested man is a retired policeman from a village in Prizren and that his detention was "politically motivated."

"Pristina continues to persecute the Serbian people from Kosovo, as evidenced by today's arrest of AD from the village of Grnçarë in the Pomorava region of Kosovo, a retired former police officer, 26 years after the conflict," the reaction states.

His arrest comes just weeks after a court in Pristina sentenced two former members of Serbia's police and military forces to prison for war crimes in Kosovo during the 1998-99 war.

The court in Pristina sentenced Zoran Kostic to 15 years in prison on March 18, while Dragan Milovic was sentenced to 7 years in prison during a hearing last week.

During the war in Kosovo, more than 13,000 civilians, mostly Albanians, were killed, while thousands more disappeared. More than 1,500 people are still missing, most of them Albanians./rel