Tonic Trial in Pristina: Witness Describes Baton Beating
A prosecution witness, Alji Djulici, testified that Boban Tonic beat him with a rubber baton in a Pristina prison, but said he was not mistreated in Lipljan. The defense wants documentary evidence.
The Basic Court in Pristina today continued the trial of Boban Tonic, a former guard at prisons in Pristina and Lipljan whom Kosovo’s Special Prosecution has charged with war crimes against the civilian population. Alji Djulici, a former inmate, testified at the hearing, directly accusing Tonic of mistreatment at the Pristina prison, while at the same time saying the defendant had not mistreated him in Lipljan.
Djulici said he was held at the Pristina prison in 1997 before being moved to Lipljan, Sremska Mitrovica, Nis and Dubrava, at the time charged with terrorism as a member of the KLA. According to him, inmates traded information about beatings among themselves.
“We were together in the rooms, thirty of us. We talked to each other, and that’s how we found out who had beaten whom,” Djulici told the hearing at the Basic Court in Pristina.
The witness said he had seen Tonic both at the Pristina prison and in Lipljan. According to his testimony, in Pristina, Tonic and a colleague mistreated him on the grounds that he had not followed the house rules.
“The explanation was that we hadn’t followed the house rules. They used rubber batons,” Djulici said.
His account of Lipljan was different. Djulici said Tonic had been part of a security cordon at the prison there, and that the guards’ conduct at that location was no different from anywhere else.
“His conduct was no different from that of the other guards. They behaved so badly that they didn’t think about the fact that there was a human being in front of them,” he said.
Asked directly whether Tonic had personally mistreated him in Lipljan, Djulici said he had not.
The Indictment and Earlier Steps in the Case
Kosovo’s Special Prosecution filed the indictment against Tonic on December 31, 2025. It accuses him of systematically abusing Albanian prisoners in Pristina and Lipljan, together with other prison guards, during 1998 and 1999. A separate part of the indictment covers the period from May 24 to June 10, 1999, when prisoners were transferred to the Pristina prison and the Lipljan unit after the bombing of Dubrava prison.
Kosovo police arrested Tonic in April 2025, in an operation that also detained Nadica Cepkenovic in Lipljan and a person identified by the initials M.I. in Pristina. Cepkenovic is being tried separately, and in early February she pleaded not guilty.
Tonic has pleaded not guilty twice, at a pretrial hearing in late January 2026 and again at the opening of the main trial on September 2. Sources do not give the exact date of the pretrial hearing.
A Second Witness, a Different Account
At the opening of the main trial on September 2, the court also heard from D.Lj., whom the prosecution lists as an injured party in the case. According to the defense’s account of his testimony, D.Lj. said that between 1997 and 1999 he never saw Tonic act violently toward anyone, nor did Tonic use violence against him personally.
Defense Demands Documentary Evidence
Defense attorney Predrag Miljkovic laid out arguments on the same day, September 2, that he says undermine the prosecution’s case. He pointed out that of the eleven witnesses named by the prosecution, nine never mentioned Tonic at all in their earlier official statements.
“Of the 11 witnesses questioned so far, as many as nine never once mentioned Boban Tonic in their earlier official statements,” Miljkovic told the court in Pristina.
At the same hearing, referring to the 20-day period the defense has been given to raise objections to the evidence and to file a motion to dismiss the indictment, Miljkovic said he intended to use the full deadline.
“We have a large number of objections to raise regarding the witness statements,” Miljkovic said.
The attorney has previously said there is no documentary evidence that the witnesses were even held in Pristina or Lipljan, and has announced that he will request records from the prison archive on who actually worked there.
The case against Tonic is part of a broader series of trials before Pristina courts of former guards and members of security structures from the period of the Kosovo war, which also includes the cases against Dragisa Milenkovic and Miroljub Jovanovic. Srpske novine has also previously reported on the indictment against 35 police officers over the events in Prekaz, which names Milorad Ulemek Legija.
Of the eleven prosecution witnesses, two have testified so far, D.Lj. at the opening of the trial on September 2 and Djulici today. How the remaining nine testimonies will unfold, and how many of them will actually concern Tonic personally, remains an open question as the proceedings continue.
