Pristina Court Postpones Trial of 21 Serbs for War Crimes

The Special Department of the Pristina Basic Court opened the initial hearing today at 9:30 a.m., at the Palace of Justice in the Ajvalija neighborhood, against 21 former military, police and security commanders from Serbia charged with war crimes against the civilian population in Kosovo in 1999. Judge Medie Bytyqi, known in Serbian as Medije Bitici, presided over the panel. The hearing was postponed to September 28 at 9:30 a.m. after most of the court appointed defense lawyers said they had not received the case files.

Under the court’s ruling, the trial is proceeding in the absence of all the defendants. The hearing was held without translation into Serbian.

What the Judge Said

Judge Bytyqi explained the postponement by pointing to a failure to deliver the documentation to the defense lawyers, even though, as she said, it was sitting with the prosecution the whole time.

“After hearing the positions of all the attorneys, during which some requested that they be provided with the case files, it was noted that no effort had been made to secure those files, and the court was not informed of this, even though the files are held by the Prosecution.”

Prosecutor Ate Dema argued that some defense lawyers had already received the files, and that the rest could be handed theirs during the hearing itself. Still, after hearing the defense’s objections, the judge decided to postpone the proceedings.

“Given that there is an objection to continuing today’s hearing, I hereby decide that the initial hearing be postponed to September 28, starting at 9:30.”

The Indictment and the Names

The indictment was filed by Kosovo’s Special Prosecution on August 15, 2025, under Article 142 in conjunction with Article 22 of the SFRY Criminal Code, an offense that now corresponds to Articles 144, 145, 146 and 147 in conjunction with Article 31 of the Kosovo Criminal Code. According to the prosecution, from January to June 1999 the defendants held effective authority and control over military and police forces in their areas of responsibility, and their actions, the indictment alleges, drove a total of 862,979 Albanian civilians out toward Albania and what was then Macedonia.

The defendants named are Zlatomir Pesic, Mladen Cirkovic, Radomir Markovic, Dusko Adamovic, Obrad Stevanovic, Zivko Trajkovic, Goran Radosavljevic, Bogoljub Janicevic, Slavisa Ivanovic, Bosko Vukicevic, Sreten Popovic, Nikola Petrovic, Krsman Jelic, Ljubisa Stojimirovic, Bozidar Delic, Radojko Stefanovic, Dragan Zivanovic, Milos Dosan, Ljubinko Cvetic, Bozidar Filic and Milovan Kovacevic. Two of the surnames vary between sources: Kosovo Online and Radio Kosovska Mitrovica spell them Janicevic and Dosan, while KoSSev lists them as Janicevic and Djosan.

Under the indictment, Markovic is charged as the then head of the State Security Department, Stevanovic as the commander of special police units for Kosovo, Trajkovic as the commander of the SAJ special anti-terrorist unit, and Radosavljevic as the commander of the anti-terrorist forces of the special police units. Jelic, Stojimirovic, Delic, Zivanovic and Dosan are charged as commanders of Yugoslav Army brigades.

A Repeat Hearing

This is already the second attempt to open the initial hearing against this same group of defendants. The first was scheduled for July 1, but the proceedings could not go ahead because the Kosovo Bar Association failed to submit the names of the court appointed defense lawyers to the court in time, and several of them did not even show up that day.

As it did after the July hearing, the court today again called on the defendants to surrender to Kosovo’s prosecuting authorities, and asked anyone with knowledge of their whereabouts to inform the Kosovo Police.

A particular feature of this case is that, according to last night’s statement from the Pristina Basic Court, the list of defendants still includes General Bozidar Delic, who died in Moscow on August 23, 2022, three years before the indictment was even filed. He had commanded the Yugoslav Army’s 549th Motorized Brigade in Kosovo, and shortly before his death was elected deputy speaker of Serbia’s National Assembly. The court’s statement did not explain how that fact will be treated in the proceedings.

Summonses to Veterans Without Official Confirmation

The hearing is taking place, as KoSSev reports, amid intensified investigations, arrests and new war crimes indictments from Kosovo’s prosecution, alongside a growing number of proceedings conducted in the absence of individuals whom the Kosovo judiciary considers unreachable. Trials in absentia were introduced into Kosovo’s criminal procedure law through the 2019 amendments, with further additions in 2021 and 2022.

In Serbia in recent months, there has also been talk of a growing number of summonses issued by Kosovo’s prosecution to former members of the army and police. Retired general Momir Stojanovic, who himself received a summons to appear and give a statement on September 30, has spoken of thousands of such summonses. There is no official confirmation of the claim that around 4,900 were sent, and Kosovo’s Special Prosecution has not disclosed the exact number sent to addresses in Serbia.