Kosovo Indicts 20 Over Djakovica War Crime, Names Radoicic

Kosovo’s Specialized Prosecutor’s Office filed an indictment on August 6 against 20 people on charges of war crimes against the civilian population in the municipality of Djakovica. The defendants are accused of taking part in the killing of 107 Albanian civilians during 1998 and 1999, and the prosecution has proposed that the case proceed in absentia against all of them.

The statement released no names. The prosecution listed only initials, in this order: M.K, R.C, M.D, P.R, S.K, L.O, Z.S, S.S, L.D, Z.R, D.G, C.B, V.B, R.B, R.R, L.R, M.S, M.R, S.G and T.A. It also did not specify where the defendants currently are.

One name has nonetheless become public, though not through the statement itself. Radio Free Europe reports that Milan Radoicic, former deputy president of the Serb List, is among the 20 defendants. The prosecution has neither confirmed nor denied that report.

How the Indictment Describes the Events in Djakovica

The first-named defendant, M.K, is charged in his capacity as head of the Secretariat of Internal Affairs in Djakovica, R.C as commander of Special Police units, and M.D as commander of the 52nd Rocket-Artillery Brigade. The remaining defendants, among them Radoicic according to Radio Free Europe’s reporting, are charged as members of those police and military formations.

According to the prosecution, women and children were separated from the men first. Women were stripped of gold, money and other valuables, while men were killed in houses, in yards and at a location known as Talic Bridge.

Women and children were separated from the men first. The women were robbed, and the men were killed in houses, in yards and at Talic Bridge, after which the houses were burned.

That is how the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office of Kosovo describes it in its statement. The prosecution treats the burning of the houses after the killings as the final phase of the same operation.

Some of the Djakovica victims were later found to have had their remains recovered after the war from a mass grave in Batajnica, one of the reasons this case has moved between the two judicial systems for years.

The 2025 Arrest Warrant and What Preceded It

This is not the first time Radoicic’s name has been tied to Djakovica. The Basic Prosecution in Djakovica issued an arrest warrant in April 2025 for Radoicic and 19 other Serbs on suspicion of taking part in the killing of civilians in the city.

That warrant, unlike the current indictment, specified an exact timeframe: May 7 to 10, 1999. The prosecution claimed at the time that more than 300 Albanian civilians had been arrested and held in makeshift facilities, from where they were transferred to prisons across Kosovo and released only after June 1999, with the help of international mediation.

This is also the second Djakovica indictment this year. In early May, the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office charged eight people with killings, the expulsion of civilians and the destruction of property in late March 1999, in a case involving 65 people killed and 12 missing. Trial in absentia was proposed there as well.

Why Has Trial in Absentia Become the Rule, Not the Exception?

The option to try defendants without their presence was opened by amendments to Kosovo’s Criminal Procedure Code in 2019, further amended in 2021 and 2022. Since then it has become the dominant model in cases against members of Serb forces, since Belgrade and Pristina have no extradition mechanism between them.

The numbers bear that out. According to the Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo, 50 proceedings were conducted in 2025 against 154 members of Serb forces. Of the 15 new indictments filed that year, ten were filed in absentia, against a total of 120 defendants. Ten convictions have been handed down, while one person was acquitted.

On the Serbian side, former members of the Yugoslav Army and Serbia’s Interior Ministry (MUP), together with their lawyers, warn that they are receiving summonses from Pristina for hearings and court dates through Serbian institutions. Some have publicly voiced suspicion that their personal data reached the Kosovo judiciary from within Serbia, raising a question of institutional protection. Pristina, meanwhile, is stepping up pressure for Serbia to open its state archives from that period.

The next step is formal and measurable. A court must rule on the proposal for trial in absentia, and only after the indictment is confirmed will it be known whether Pristina’s court will proceed against 20 people who will not be present in the courtroom. Until then, the public knows only one of the 20 names.