Zubin Potok: Third Arrest in a Week, More Serbs Detained
Kosovo police arrested J.R. in Zubin Potok on suspicion of war crimes, the third such arrest there in a week. The same day, at least two more Serbs were detained, one of them at the Jarinje crossing.
Kosovo police arrested a man with the initials J.R. today in Zubin Potok, on suspicion of committing the crime of war crimes against the civilian population. Kosovo Police and the Special Prosecution of Kosovo issued a joint statement, and the arrest was carried out by the Kosovo Police Directorate for the Investigation of War Crimes, on the prosecution’s order.
This is the third arrest in Zubin Potok on the same charge within a week. M.J. and M.B. were arrested earlier, and the Basic Court in Pristina ordered a month of pretrial detention for both. The statement on J.R.’s arrest did not specify whether it is part of the same case as the two earlier ones.
Three detentions in one day
The day did not end with a single arrest. At around 1pm, R.D. from North Mitrovica was detained at the Jarinje administrative crossing. In the Zubin Potok area, a person with the initials R.K. was also brought in.
Kosovo Police described some of those involved as detained for questioning, noting that questioning does not amount to being taken into custody. That distinction is not a technicality. It determines the point from which legal deadlines start running and from which a detained person gains the right to a defense lawyer, so the same act ends up described one way in a police statement and another way in a family’s experience of it.
What the Serb List says
The Serb List said that several people were brought in during the day and that a number of family homes were searched in Ibarski Kolasin. The party’s statement includes an assessment of how Pristina’s institutions are conducting themselves.
Under the guise of investigations into alleged war crimes, the institutions in Pristina are not respecting basic legal procedures, nor the fundamental rights of citizens, whether they are detainees, witnesses or suspects.
The Serb List went a step further in characterizing the proceedings themselves.
The way these proceedings are being carried out is unbecoming of Europe’s judicial systems in the 21st century, and resembles an inquisition more than anything else.
In the same statement, the party recalls that more than 550 Serbs are still listed as missing, and demands that the same standard be applied to every investigation, regardless of who the victim is.
Why is this happening now?
The arrests coincide in time with exhumations at Mala Kaludra near Zubin Potok. Kosovo’s Special Prosecution said on August 1 that more than ten exhumation orders had been issued and that it was too early to confirm any figures on the remains found.
Prosecution spokeswoman Nora Ljuta specified what stage the process is at.
When it comes to the excavations being carried out as part of the process of searching for missing persons, I can say that this is a case that is still in the investigative phase.
Ljuta then also made an appeal to the media.
We ask for understanding, and that any reporting not confirmed by the competent institutions be avoided.
The call for restraint comes from an institution that, on that same day, announced an arrest complete with the suspect’s initials and the charge against him, while staying silent about what has actually been found in the field. The prosecution, in other words, controls both the pace and the content of what the public gets to know.
A timeline reconstructed backward
When we wrote a few days ago about the detention the Basic Court in Pristina ordered for two suspects in the Mala Kaludra case, there was one site under investigation and two people in custody. In under a week, the number of arrests has climbed to three, with at least two detentions in a single day and searches carried out in Ibarski Kolasin.
The next date is already known. The one month of detention ordered for M.J. and M.B. expires at the end of August, when the Basic Court in Pristina must decide whether to extend it. Until then, one question remains open, one that neither Kosovo Police nor the Special Prosecution answered today: whether all three arrests belong to the same case, and how many more orders have been issued.
