Milorad Djokovic sentenced to ten years in prison at first instance

The Basic Court in Pristina has sentenced Milorad Djokovic of Vitomirica, near Pec, to ten years in prison at first instance for a war crime committed in 1999. The defense has the right to appeal to the Court of Appeals within 30 days.

The pronouncement of Djokovic’s judgment was postponed on July 27 at the request of the defense due to inconsistencies in the testimony of one witness, after which the main trial was reopened.

Milorad Djokovic’s attorney, Vasilije Arsic, said at the time that there were discrepancies in the statements of prosecution witness Nurije Krasniqi.

He said that the defense had requested that the proceedings be supplemented in order to obtain all the evidence referred to by the witness during the pre-trial proceedings.

According to the indictment, in May 1999, Djokovic, as a member of the Serbian police and military forces, participated in the killing of civilians in the village of Ozdrim, near Pec.

He was arrested in June 2022 and has been in detention ever since.

Djokovic was the only Serb living in Vitomirica, where his house was burned down during the March 2004 pogrom.

Milorad returned to Vitomirica in 2008.

Following his return, the Albanian Prekaj family, which had been using his property, accused Milorad of personally killing their father. Although it later emerged that Sadrija Prekaj had died in a traffic accident after the war, neither Milorad’s land nor his right to cultivate it was restored.

This was followed by a petition signed by 400 residents of the neighboring village of Dubovo, who accused Djokovic of also being responsible for the fact that King Nikola’s army had killed 12 Albanians in 1913 on a plot of land owned by Djokovic.

Several years before his arrest, Djokovic initiated proceedings against the local authorities in Pec concerning a plot of land that he had previously received from the municipality and on which he had built a house.

Although a final and binding court decision was issued, the house was never re-registered in Djokovic’s name.

While in prison, Djokovic subsequently learned that his house had been demolished.