Nenad Raskovic Transferred to Emergency Center in Belgrade

Nenad Raskovic, a Serb from the village of Dren in the Zubin Potok municipality, was transferred by ambulance on August 12 from the Kosovska Mitrovica Clinical and Hospital Center to the Emergency Center in Belgrade. The decision was made around noon by the board of doctors who had been treating him, because of his unstable condition and the extent of his injuries.

Raskovic says three police officers took him out of his family home, drove him into the woods, tied him to a tree and beat him, demanding he hand over a weapon he says he does not have. We have already reported on his admission to intensive care following the search of his home.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic visited him the same day at the University Clinical Center of Serbia and posted a message on Instagram. Radio Kosovska Mitrovica carried the post at 5:05 p.m.

“I visited Serbian homesteader Nenad Raskovic at the Clinical Center of Serbia. Albin Kurti’s police beat him nearly to death for no reason at all. His injuries are worse than we expected, and the moment he learned that a second rib had been broken by the force of the blows from the Albanian thugs, all he asked was that we arrange for his family to come and let his brother know to take care of the livestock, which he had always looked after himself.”

Vucic said he told Raskovic that all of Serbia loves him endlessly. The request the patient made, to have his family brought to him and to let his brother take over caring for the livestock, was the only detail from the visit that the president made public.

What the Medical Report Says

The findings were presented by Zlatan Elek, director of the Kosovska Mitrovica hospital and president of the Serb List, himself a physician.

“Nenad Raskovic’s injuries include contusions to the head and chest, on both the front and back of the chest, a fracture of the ninth rib, and elevated blood pressure. The man has suffered severe psychological trauma that, according to our psychiatrists, will take many months and years just to begin healing, let alone to heal fully,” Elek said.

Alongside the chest injuries front and back, with bruising and hematomas, Elek said the patient had also been threatened over the fact that his wife is Albanian.

“He told me he was threatened that he would lose his wife, that she would be expelled from Kosovo,” the president of the Serb List said.

Elek described the case as more serious than the injuries alone suggest. “This is not just a beating, this is an attempted murder of one of our citizens,” he concluded.

Serb List Says Raskovic Is Not the Only One

Igor Simic, a member of the Serb List presidency and a deputy in the Kosovo Assembly, presented information that shifts the story from one man to an entire area.

“According to information the Serb List has, gathered on the ground thanks to the efforts of Mayor Perovic, Mr. Raskovic is not the only one who has survived injuries like these in roughly the past fifteen days,” Simic said.

He went on to specify that, according to his information, seven more people from Ibarski Kolasin had been seriously beaten. A list of names exists, he said, but he cannot share it with the public.

Simic attributed the victims’ silence to fear of retaliation and to the fact that, in his words, no one has been held accountable for violence against Serbs so far. He also said that after the Serb List’s legal team visited them, some people asked in tears that their beatings not be made public. Kosovo police, Simic claims, do not record attacks on Serbs as ethnically motivated.

The Video That Surfaced a Day Later

The Serbian Democracy party issued a statement on August 13 noting that recordings said to show possession of weapons and Raskovic’s involvement during the war period surfaced only 24 hours after his home was searched and he was beaten.

“Regardless of the authenticity and content of those recordings, they cannot justify beating, binding and humiliating a man, nor can they retroactively legalize police conduct that fell outside the law,” the statement reads.

The party says that if evidence of a crime exists, institutions are obligated to bring it before the relevant authorities and carry out a lawful investigation. It also asked who tied up and beat a man who was not even a suspect at the time, on whose orders and on what legal basis.

Serbian Democracy is demanding that representatives of the international community, KFOR and EULEX, respond urgently, establish the facts in Raskovic’s case, and put a stop to what it calls institutional violence.

The case is being handled by the Kosovo Police Inspectorate, of which Simic said he has no great expectations for the investigation. None of the statements to come out of Mitrovica and Belgrade in the past two days has said when the inspectorate might release its findings.