Kosovo publishes ‘evidence’ of Serb-state involvement in north Kosovo attack

The Kosovo government has published two pieces of evidence that Serbia was behind what the EU called a ‘terrorist attack’ in northern Kosovo over the weekend, calling on the international community to take action.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, a Kosovo police patrol was ambushed by some 30 heavily armed gunmen, accompanied by armoured vehicles, leaving one officer dead and another wounded. The men fled to a local monastery, where they barricaded themselves in and traded gunfire with police for hours.

The government in Pristina states Serbia was behind the attack with the intent to destabilise the country, something Belgrade denies.

Kosovo’s Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla has identified one of those killed as Bojan Mijailovic, the bodyguard of Aleksander Vulin, the head of Serbian intelligence who is also under US sanctions.

“Today it has been confirmed that one of the killed who was also a participant in that act is Bojan Mijailović, the bodyguard of the head of the Serbian BIA, Aleksandër Vulin, during his visit to the Republic of Kosovo in 2013,” he wrote on Facebook while posting a photo of Mijailovic.

He said this is evidence Serbia is fully involved in the attack with the aim of destabilising Kosovo.

“There is already a formal and structural connection of the involvement of Aleksandër Vucic in the 24 September attack in Banjska t Zveçani: Milan Radoicic, as the vice-president of the Serbian List and the bodyguard of Aleksandr Vulin, head of the BIA. Both of these are also sanctioned in the US blacklist. Both of these are among the closest people to the president of Serbia,” he added.

This comes after another individual, Milan Radoicic, vice-leader of the Serbian List political party in Kosovo, central to EU demands to hold new elections in the north and increase Serb autonomy, was shown to be leading the terrorist attack, according to video footage.

Leader of Serbian List implicated in Kosovo terrorist attack, Albanian PM nudges EU, US for action

Also on Wednesday, Svecla published a document reportedly showing the delivery of a grenade launcher from the Serbian army to the armed group. The launcher was then seized by Kosovo police on Sunday.

“This document is a certificate that the Serbian army gave to the group on the occasion of handing over the grenade launcher, which was then taken by the Kosovo Police in the action of 24 September. What we have continuously stated, we are now supporting with indisputable facts and documents that the state of Serbia supports these terrorist groups politically, financially, and logistically”, he wrote.

Serbia has denied any involvement and blamed Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti for making Serbs in Kosovo live in fear in a bid to remove them from the north of the country.

Furthermore, Belgrade has blamed KFOR not preventing the Kosovo police from shooting Serbs,

“For us, KFOR had to be activated at the same time, because it is the first to react in such situations and to prevent further bloodshed and further human casualties…They came out, but they stood aside and allowed the well-organised Albanian police to continue hunting Serbs around Banjska,” said Defence Minister Milos Vučević.

In an address on Wednesday, Vucic said those Serbs killed will never be terrorists to him, rather they are “family men, fathers.”

(Alice Taylor | Euractiv.com)