The largest entity of the Serbs in Kosovo, Lista Serbe, said that the Court of Appeal in Pristina has delivered the decision for the official of this party, Ivan Todosijevic, according to which, he has been sentenced to one year in prison for denying the massacre of Recak.
Lista Serbe said that it sees this judgment as a message from the Government of the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, that the members of the Serbian community “have no place in Kosovo”.
In the case that was retried, Todosijevic was sentenced to one year in prison for “spreading hatred and intolerance”.
The case against him is related to the statements that contained hate speech related to the massacre in Reçak.
Todosijević stated in March 2019 that the reason for “NATO’s aggression” against the targets of the Yugoslav army in 1999 was “the so-called humanitarian disaster in Kosovo and the fictional massacre of Recak”.
Meanwhile, the Office for Kosovo in the Serbian Government said that Todosijević has been invited to appear at the detention center on April 3 to start serving his sentence.
This office said that it will notify the special envoy of the European Union for the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak, and the ambassadors of the QUINT countries regarding Todosijević’s sentence.
In a statement to Radio Free Europe, Todosijević’s lawyer, Nebojsha Vllajić, said that they will appeal to the Supreme Court of Kosovo, which had returned the case to a retrial in early 2021.
“Whatever is done verbally, with words, orally, [për këtë] no one can go to jail. This is not a criminal offense,” he said.
In 2021, the prison sentence for Todosijevic was postponed twice, after the Supreme Court returned the case to a retrial.
Todosijević is a member of the leadership of the Serbian List, a party that previously participated in the work of the Assembly of Kosovo and was part of the Government.
Currently, he is the mayor of the parallel municipality of Zveçan, which operates according to the Serbian system.
At the time when Todosijević made the statements about the Reçak massacre, he held the position of Minister of Local Self-Government Administration in the Government of Kosovo. He was then dismissed by the then Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj.
In addition to calling the events in Recak “fiction”, the statements made on the 20th anniversary of the launch of NATO bombings against the then Yugoslavia, Todosijevic also said that “Albanian terrorists, who invented them all, made them the biggest crimes in Kosovo and Metohija, for which no one has been imprisoned and has not given responsibility until today”.
NATO launched attacks on Serbian targets to prevent violence by Serbian military, police and paramilitary forces against Albanians in Kosovo. This event was preceded by the murder of 45 Albanians in the village of Reçak in Shtime.
The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, has publicly defended Todosijevic, saying that he believes that “Recak is fiction” and that Serbs in Kosovo do not have the right to freedom of speech.
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