Office for Kosovo and Metohija: Evidently, Kurti went hunting for Serb returnees

The Office for Kosovo and Metohija announced today that with the arrest of another Serb in the municipality of Istok, it is clear that Albin Kurti, together with his police, started hunting Serb returnees, in order to dissuade them from returning and peaceful coexistence.

"Another Serb, a returnee to the municipality of Istok, was arrested today in his village, in this place. He is Zarko Zaric, who was taken from his doorstep, under the charge of an alleged war crime in the village of Ljubozda", according to the statement of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija.

They add that Zaric returned to his native village in 2017 and has not left Kosovo since then.

"Apparently, Albin Kurti and his police went hunting for Serb returnees, in order to use fear and false accusations to dissuade them from returning and peaceful coexistence in their centuries-old hearths," the Office for Kosovo and Metohija said.

They remind that Zarko is the second Serb from the East who was arrested in the last 24 hours under "absurd charges" of war crimes, after Momir Pantic, an internally displaced person from Istok, was also arrested last night.

"After such politically motivated arrests, it is clear why the rate of return of expelled and displaced Serbs to Kosovo and Metohija is the lowest in a post-conflict area," the statement said.

The Office for Kosovo and Metohija hired a lawyer who will represent Zaric before the Pristina judiciary.

"We will also inform all international representatives about these arranged arrests," added the Office for Kosovo and Metohija.

By the way, Zaric was detained in February 2020, but after the hearing before the Special Prosecutor's Office in Pristina as a witness, he was released and was not charged with war crimes, so he returned to his village.

Then he said that in the morning, at the church in Ljubozda, two plainclothes inspectors and a Kosovo policeman came to pick him up, who, as he described, impudently shoved him into a car.

In the Special Prosecutor's Office of Kosovo, he was questioned as a witness about the events in 1998 and 1999 in the village of Dobrusa near Istok. He said that he signed the statement, and that there was no mistreatment and that the officers were fair to him.

Until the arrival of KFOR and UNMIK in Kosovo in 1999, about 40 Serbian families lived in the village of Ljubozda, who then moved to central Serbia.