Naskovic Goes on Trial in Pristina, Defense Contests Charges

The Basic Court in Pristina opened the evidentiary phase of the case against Dragutin Naskovic (73) of Kmetovac, near Gnjilane, on October 14, 2026. He is accused of allegedly committing a war crime under command responsibility in the Gnjilane municipality during the 1999 conflict. After opening statements from the prosecution and the defense, Naskovic again said he is not guilty.

The offense he is charged with is a failure to act: the indictment claims he did not take enough action or measures to prevent the deaths of civilians. At his first court appearance late last year, and again today, Naskovic said that at the time he was a police commander who had been transferred from the village of Zegra to Novo Brdo.

What does the defense argue?

Defense lawyer Vasilije Arsic calls the indictment unfounded and baseless. According to him, on April 30, 1999, the date mentioned in the indictment, Naskovic was police commander in Novo Brdo, not in Zegra. Arsic says no material evidence links his client to the events in the villages of Zegra and Vlastica, and he announced that new evidence and witnesses will be presented.

After the hearing in Pristina, he told RTS why he considers the whole proceeding unnecessary:

“I hope we will succeed in the course of this trial, because if there had been any concrete actions by Naskovic in terms of incriminating those acts, he would have been prosecuted earlier. They would not have waited so many years to now charge him with not taking enough action and measures to prevent the deaths of the civilian population, and meanwhile we have verdicts from a military court, a civilian court and a court in Podgorica that the persons who committed those crimes were convicted. So this process, I think, is unnecessary, we are only burdening the court,” Arsic said.

The defense, in other words, relies on the fact that verdicts have already been handed down against other people for those acts, which Arsic cites as a reason Naskovic should not be tried.

Why is the failure to act at the center of the dispute?

Arsic said this is the first case before that court in which someone is tried for this form of the offense. That is where he sees the weak point of the indictment, and he explained what the prosecution, in his view, would have to prove:

“To me it is really unclear, because to prove that he committed the crime by failing to act, several important circumstances have to be stated first, meaning whether he was in a position to command those paramilitary formations, whether he knew about their acts, whether he could have prevented their acts. These are all matters the prosecution should have established before it filed the indictment, so it is really unclear to the defense how this indictment came about,” Arsic said.

RTS and Tanjug reports on the hearing do not say what the prosecution presented in its opening statement, so its answer to these objections is not yet known.

Arrest at Bela Zemlja and bail

Kosovo police arrested Naskovic on September 15, 2025, at the Bela Zemlja administrative crossing. He is suspected of taking part, together with members of Serbian police and military forces, in the killing of Albanian civilians in the Gnjilane municipality between April 13 and April 30, 1999. RTS reports that at the time of the arrest the number given was 25 civilians, while the Albanian portal Telegrafi gives 29 for the indictment, so the figure differs between sources.

Naskovic is defending himself while free, having been released on bail of 40,000 euros. According to Arsic, he has lived with his family in Kmetovac the whole time and has not left Kosovo and Metohija. The date of the next hearing has not been announced.

RTS notes that several dozen Serbs are currently in prison in Kosovo and Metohija. Some have been convicted of alleged war crimes, while others are still on trial or awaiting the start of proceedings.