PRISTINA (Reuters) – Three ethnic Serbs pleaded not guilty in a Kosovo court on Wednesday to terrorism charges in connection with a 2023 shooting attack in which gunmen infiltrating from Serbia stormed a village and shot dead a police officer.
Prosecutors said the three defendants were among some 80 gunmen who launched the attack, the worst violence in the volatile region since ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008.
One of the defendants in the trial in Kosovo’s capital Pristina pleaded not guilty and two others declined to enter a plea, which by Kosovo law is considered a not-guilty plea.
Last month Kosovo prosecutors indicted 45 people over the September 2023 attack, all of whom apart from the three on trial are believed to be in Serbia. A higher court in Kosovo has yet to rule whether they can be tried in absentia.
Prosecutors said the suspected leader of the armed group, Milan Radoicic, a former top Kosovo Serb politician, was also in Serbia. Radoicic has publicly admitted to have taken part in the gun battle.
Those suspects who are in Serbia are unlikely at the moment to be extradited to Kosovo since Belgrade does not recognize Kosovo’s independence, still formally considering it to be part of Serbian territory.
No date for a verdict has been given, in what prosecutors have described as a complex case.
The Kosovo government has accused Serbian authorities of being behind the attack, Belgrade has denied this.
Around 50,000 Serbs who live in north Kosovo and form a local majority do not recognise Pristina state institutions and regard Belgrade as their capital, continuing to receive pensions and other benefits from Serbia.
Kosovo obtained its statehood a decade after an ethnic Albanian guerrilla uprising against repressive Serbian rule.
(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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