General Stojanovic Summoned Again in Meja War Crimes Case
Retired general Momir Stojanovic says a new summons over suspected war crimes reached him after seven years, and that his personal data from state records ended up in Pristina.
A summons from the War Crimes Prosecution in Belgrade arrived at an address where Momir Stojanovic hasn’t lived for years. The retired Yugoslav Army general, former head of security of the Pristina Corps and the first director of the Military Security Agency, today published photos of the summons, official prosecution notes from 2019 and the supporting documents, claiming that after seven years the same case, one already discontinued once, is being reopened.
The summons concerns questioning over suspicion that he committed a war crime in Kosovo. Stojanovic’s own post refers to the War Crimes Court, while the text of the summons, as reported by media, comes from the War Crimes Prosecution.
“After seven years, these days, at an address where I haven’t lived for a long time, I received a summons from the War Crimes Court in Belgrade to report for questioning on suspicion that I committed a war crime,” Stojanovic said.
The address here is more than an administrative detail. His entire argument rests on it.
What happened in the earlier investigation?
In February 2015, Interpol issued a red notice against Stojanovic, at the request of the then EULEX mission and the court in Djakovica, over suspected war crimes against Albanian civilians. He says he later turned himself in to the Serbian prosecution and requested that an investigation be opened.
“You duly report to the War Crimes Court and demand an investigation into the event in question. After a three year investigation, during which three prosecutors changed, you receive an official note discontinuing the case for lack of evidence, one that clearly explains you had nothing to do with the event,” Stojanovic stated.
The investigation lasted three years, prosecutors changed three times, and the case was closed by an official note in 2019 for lack of evidence. Stojanovic says he then approached the Ministry of Justice and the national Interpol office, asking that the outcome be forwarded to Interpol’s General Secretariat in Lyon so the red notice could be lifted. He says he never got a reply, not then and not since.
The Meja case and the ruling that reset everything
Stojanovic is one of 53 people indicted in the Meja case, the largest war crimes proceeding before Kosovo’s judiciary. The indictment was filed in late 2023 and covers events from April 1999 in Meja and surrounding villages of the Djakovica municipality, where, according to Kosovo’s Special Prosecution, 370 Albanian civilians were killed. The indictment lists Stojanovic as the then head of security of the Pristina Corps and names him among the key defendants.
The trial in absentia opened before the Basic Court in Pristina, but in early June this year Kosovo’s Court of Appeals annulled confirmation of the indictment and sent the case back for a new ruling. The reasoning came down to one point: no reasonable effort had been made to notify the defendants of the proceedings, and there was no evidence the summonses and indictment had been published as required.
That is the context in which court summonses started arriving at home addresses in Serbia. Delivery stopped being a technicality and became a condition the trial in absentia cannot survive without. When the Racak trial opened before the same court in late July, the prosecution immediately stressed that summonses in that case had been sent through international legal assistance and that warrants had been issued.
A suspicion that keeps repeating
Stojanovic states his suspicion without hedging.
“Since the summons is addressed to my old address, which, like those of many fellow veterans, someone in the state apparatus handed over to Kosovo’s judiciary, one can conclude this is a repeat of the entire process at the request of the judiciary of the unrecognized, and maybe recognized without us even knowing it, state of Kosovo. Or maybe all of this serves to discipline and intimidate political dissenters,” Stojanovic wrote.
Goran Radosavljevic Guri, a former commander of the Special Police Units and one of the accused in the Racak case, made almost the identical claim in recent weeks.
“But look, someone of ours gave out that information. How else would the prosecution in Pristina know where someone lives? That means someone in our state bodies, for whatever reason, has been handing out information about all of us, our current addresses,” Radosavljevic said in a television appearance.
Official Belgrade rejects this. The Ministry of Justice confirmed in late June that letters from Kosovo judicial bodies had reached some citizens, but specified they had not passed through the ministry. Zoran Andjelkovic, acting director of Serbia’s postal service, said two days later that mail between Serbia and Kosovo has for years traveled through international hubs in Vienna, Ljubljana and Budapest, since no agreement on direct exchange exists. EULEX said it had not mediated in the delivery, and Kosovo’s Special Prosecution would not say how many summonses had been sent or by what route.
Why Stojanovic reads the summons as political
His biography explains the tone of the post. Born in 1958 in Djakovica, Stojanovic headed security for the Pristina Corps from 1996 to 1999, and in 2003 was put in charge of the military security service of the then State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. He founded and led the Military Security Agency from January 2004, only to be removed that May by then president Svetozar Marovic, on the grounds that he had made unauthorized statements about agents in Kosovo. He retired in 2005, and eight years later won a lawsuit against the state over what he called an unlawful retirement.
He has passed through the full political circle: the Serbian Radical Party, then the Socialist Party of Serbia, then the Serbian Progressive Party, which he left in 2016 to found the Honest for Nis movement. He was a member of parliament from 2012 to 2016 and chaired the parliamentary Committee for Control of Security Services. Since February 2024 he has led the Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohija, a body that rivals the Serbian List in the north of Kosovo.
A man who once ran a counterintelligence service now claims his own personal data leaked out of the state apparatus. He closed the post with a line that shows exactly where he stands politically.
“There is no fear and no turning back. Behind me is Serbia, but not this one, and not under this government,” Stojanovic said.
The question that remains isn’t only about him. If summonses from Kosovo’s judiciary really are reaching the exact home addresses of former army and police members, someone had to supply those addresses. The Ministry of Justice announced in late June that it would review all the circumstances. The outcome of that review has not yet been made public.
