Drecun: Pristina Mails Court Summons, Bypassing UNMIK

Milovan Drecun, head of the Serbian parliament’s Committee for Kosovo and Metohija, says Pristina is pursuing its case against detained Serbs by mailing court summons straight to citizens’ home addresses, bypassing the agreed legal-cooperation channel that should pass through UNMIK. He made the statement after more than 30 people were detained at Gazimestan on Vidovdan itself, among them, he said, a minor.

Drecun argued that a broader aim hides behind the administrative move. In his words, Pristina intends to erase every trace and every awareness that Kosovo and Metohija is Serbian land. The detentions at the site of the Battle of Kosovo, he said, are not accidental but part of a pattern that systematically strips Serbian symbols from a space that carries particular weight for Serbian history.

Why mailing the summons is contentious

The disputed point is not the form of the summons but the route it travels. The legal-cooperation mechanism, agreed within the Brussels dialogue, requires that requests from Pristina’s judicial bodies go through UNMIK rather than land in mailboxes like ordinary post. By sending summons directly to home addresses, Drecun argues, Pristina unilaterally cuts out the intermediary and tries to present its institutions as the sole authority across the entire territory.

Drecun specified that Albin Kurti went ahead despite warnings from international bodies that called for Serbian symbols and gatherings not to be obstructed. According to Pristina media, the detainees were accused of singing so-called nationalist songs, a charge Belgrade rejects as politically motivated. The Committee for Kosovo and Metohija said Serbs can and will come to Gazimestan, but only under Serbian flags.

This angle differs from the daily record of arrests. The claim is that the judiciary is being used as a tool rather than an independent institution, and that procedure is bent to deliver a political result. If summons travel outside the agreed channel, it raises the question of whether any framework remains in which detainees could expect equal footing before a court.

What comes after Vidovdan

Belgrade has so far answered such moves through diplomatic channels and appeals to international representatives, insisting that the Brussels agreement be respected. Drecun signaled that the Committee intends to bring the case of the detainees before the relevant bodies, with the focus precisely on the bypassing of UNMIK as a procedural breach that can be documented.

The open question concerns the response of those who oversaw the deal in the first place. The legal-cooperation mechanism is not a Serbian invention but part of a Brussels arrangement guaranteed by international institutions, so any circumvention of it falls on them as well. Belgrade reads silence on such a move as tacit approval, while a loud reaction would, conversely, confirm that the rules still apply to both sides.

For now only the consequences are known, the detentions, the summons and the accusations over songs, while the outcome stays uncertain. Will the insistence on procedure turn into concrete diplomatic pressure, or remain at the level of statements with which Vidovdan has already ended?