Celic: Pristina skillfully uses secret indictments for manipulation and intimidates Serbs

Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Kosovska Mitrovica, Dusko Celic, says that the authorities in Pristina can almost categorize everything as a violation of Kosovo's constitutional order and that today, every citizen of Kosovo of Serbian nationality is a potential suspect for this offense, i.e., anyone who was at a protest or barricade and did not commit any violent acts.

"Absolutely everything contrary to any legal norm in their Constitution, from the preamble to the final provisions, can be interpreted by the Kosovo authorities as a violation of the constitutional order. This includes not only what would be defined in states as a violation of the legal order, unity of power, state symbols, but almost everything. Kosovo authorities today, figuratively speaking, can classify as a violation of the constitutional order, and unfortunately, even classify protests, which are of a political nature and non-violent, and which represent elementary human and democratic rights," Celic said for Kosovo Online.

He points out that there is no data on how many Serbs have been legally prosecuted on this basis, and as he believes, no one can know how many people are on the lists suspected of allegedly violating Kosovo's constitutional order because, as he emphasizes, Pristina is very skillfully manipulating this for the purpose of intimidating Serbs.

"A number of people had to leave the territory of Kosovo and Metohija because they simply do not know what awaits them if they fall under the jurisdiction of Kosovo. My assumptions are that on those lists, although they claim that secret lists and secret indictments do not exist, which is not true, there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people," Celic said.

After the Pristina authorities arrested Srecko Sofronijevic from Zvecan last week for alleged violation of Kosovo's constitutional order, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced that all those who violated Serbia's constitutional order would be arrested and prosecuted by Serbian authorities, and when asked whom this message could refer to, Celic says he can state that so far Serbian judicial authorities, primarily prosecutors, have been very restrained in terms of criminal prosecution of Kosovo Albanian citizens who were members of paramilitary and paramilitary police formations.

"Especially those who have been actors of violent acts in the last year or two, I would even say criminal acts against Serbs – shooting at Serbs, harassing Serbs on several grounds, abuse in terms of systematic discrimination against Serbs, arbitrary arrests of Serbs, provisional detention that has become a substitute for criminal sanction. So, if we were to interpret it that way, we could see numerous members of Albanian paramilitary formations, even their police forces, as suspected individuals," Celic said.