Two Serbs Arrested in Zubin Potok Over Alleged War Crimes

Kosovo police brought in five Serbs from the Zubin Potok municipality for questioning overnight between Monday, July 27 and Tuesday, July 28. The Office for Kosovo and Metohija said the detainees were taken to Pristina. Three residents of the village of Crepulja were released after giving statements, while two remained in custody.

Those held are Momir Jaksic from the village of Donji Jasenovik and Miljko Bisevac from the village of Kaludra. Kosovo’s Special Prosecution announced on July 28 that they had been ordered held for up to 48 hours on suspicion of a war crime against the civilian population, with the suspicion relating to alleged crimes committed in 1999 in the Mitrovica area. According to the police statement, the two men are accused of committing crimes during that year’s war in which 23 Albanian civilians were killed.

Their lawyer, Delevic, said the prosecution had filed a request with the Basic Court for a hearing on whether to order pre-trial detention. That means a panel of judges must rule within two days on whether the two men from Zubin Potok stay behind bars or defend themselves at liberty.

Why does Belgrade read the arrests as retaliation?

Context is what gives this case weight the legal procedure alone would not carry. The arrests came only a week after the demolition of Serb-owned holiday homes on the shore of Lake Gazivode near Zubin Potok, an operation the EU Office in Pristina asked to be halted immediately. Two events seven days apart, on the same territory and centred on the same community, are difficult to read separately in Belgrade.

The Office for Kosovo and Metohija characterised the detentions as terror, retaliation and intimidation of members of the Serb community, adding that its representatives are in contact with the families of those detained. Srpska Lista said the detentions were groundless and amounted to continued pressure on the Serb people, arguing that war crimes charges are being used as an instrument of intimidation rather than a route to establishing responsibility.

Pristina maintains that this is a routine investigative step by the Special Prosecution, the body with jurisdiction over war crimes cases, and that the detentions were carried out on prosecutorial orders. The two readings cannot be reconciled through press statements. One places the case inside a legal procedure, the other inside a political campaign.

What happens next in the proceedings

The next step is the hearing before the Basic Court, where prosecutors must set out reasonable suspicion and their grounds for detention. If the court grants the request, the two men remain in custody while the investigation continues. If it refuses, they defend themselves at liberty under restrictive measures.

What is not known at this point, and what will shape everything that follows, is the specific evidence on which the prosecution bases suspicion for events more than two decades old. Until the detention ruling is published, the public has only the statements of two sides that agree neither on the facts nor on the motives.

Belgrade is already asking whether cases like this can be separated from the broader situation in northern Kosovo and from the dynamics of a dialogue that is stalled as it is. That question will not be answered by a session of the Basic Court, but by what comes after it.

Do you expect the court in Pristina to order pre-trial detention for the two men arrested in Zubin Potok?