Remanded in custody
Serbian ringleader released after attack
October 4, 2023, 3:04 p.m
After a Serbian commando squad attacked Kosovar police officers, tensions between the two countries escalated. However, shortly after the alleged leader was arrested, he was released in Belgrade. The Kosovo government accuses Serbia of complicity.
One day after his arrest in Belgrade, the initiator of the latest attack by Serbian paramilitaries on Kosovo police officers, Milan Radoicic, was released.
An examining judge at the Supreme Court in Belgrade rejected a prosecutor’s request for 30 days in pre-trial detention, Serbian media reported. However, the Kosovo-Serbian businessman and politician is not allowed to leave Serbia or his place of residence, is not allowed to travel to Kosovo and must report to the police at the beginning and middle of each month. His passport was confiscated.
Radoicic publicly acknowledged responsibility for the Sept. 24 attack by Serb militants on police officers in northern Kosovo. A 30-man, heavily armed Serbian commando group attacked Kosovar police officers in the town of Banjska near Mitrovica. Three Serbian attackers and a Kosovar police officer were killed.
Attack in Banjska increases tension
According to the public prosecutor’s office, Radoicic is accused of purchasing weapons, ammunition and explosive devices with great destructive power in Tuzla in Bosnia-Herzegovina from January 2023 to September 24 and hiding them in abandoned buildings and forests in Kosovo. As the ringleader of a group, he put people in danger during the action on September 24th in Banjska. At the prosecutor’s hearing, Radoicic denied criminal acts. He had previously publicly announced that he wanted to “encourage the people in Kosovo in their resistance against the regime of (Prime Minister) Albin Kurti.”
The attack on Banjska had increased tensions between Kosovo and Serbia. The Kosovo leadership accused Belgrade of being behind Radoicic’s actions. He claimed that he had acted on his own initiative. Serbia’s former province of Kosovo declared independence in 2008 after a bloody war. Serbia does not recognize this.