From 4 to 10 years in prison. These are the sentences given to four Serbs, including three police officers, on Friday in Pristina. These people were convicted on Friday of complicity in the 2018 murder of a Kosovo Serb politician, Oliver Ivanovic, a slayer of organized crime and critical voice of Belgrade. “We believe that this murder was committed for political reasons by a group led by Milan Radoicic, with the intention of taking control” in the majority Serb areas of Kosovo, prosecutors wrote in the indictment that was adopted by the Court, the judge said when delivering the verdict.
Marko Rosic, a bodyguard, received the harshest sentence, 10 years in prison, while the three police officers received lighter sentences. Two other people were acquitted. The Court followed the prosecutor’s submissions and found them guilty of “acting as a structured criminal group”, formed in 2011 and “led by Zvonko Veselinovic and Milan Radoicic, who are on the run”.
Mr Radoicic has long been considered the most influential Serbian politician in northern Kosovo and close to the Belgrade government. He has been under US sanctions since 2021, suspected of organised crime and corruption. He fled to Serbia in the autumn and is suspected of leading a heavily armed Serbian commando that killed a Kosovar policeman in September.
Then aged 64, Oliver Ivanovic was killed in January 2018 by six bullets in the back in front of his party headquarters in Mitrovica, a town divided between Serbs and Albanians, in northern Kosovo. One of the few Albanian speakers in his community, Ivanovic was also one of the rare politicians to oppose Belgrade’s control over Kosovo’s Serb minority. Serbia refuses to recognize the independence that its former southern province, populated mainly by Albanians, proclaimed in 2008.
Ivanovic was a favored target of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s local political allies and violent pro-government media campaigns in Serbia. He also denounced the grip of crime on North Mitrovica, the Serbian part of the locality. Although he refused the independence of Kosovo, like almost all members of his community, he regularly denounced the role played there by Belgrade.
