Todosijevic was sentenced to one year in prison for his statement about Racak

The Court of Appeal issued a decision confirming the first-instance verdict by which the former Minister of Administration and Local Self-Government from the Serb List, Ivan Todosijevic, was sentenced to one year in prison for "inciting hatred, national, racial, religious or ethnic division or intolerance", Telegrafi reports.

Todosijevic was sentenced to one year in prison by the General Court in Pristina on October 19, 2022, and in the explanation of the appeal verdict, it is stated that the complaints of the Special Prosecutor's Office and Todosijevic's defense attorney, Nebojsa Vlajic, were unfounded.

In the appellate decision, it is stated that the Prosecution's claims regarding the erroneous and incomplete verification of the factual situation, which the Prosecution claimed caused a violation of the criminal law, and which referred to the reclassification of the criminal offense, were unfounded.

The appellate court found that the Court of First Instance had correctly and completely established the factual situation and acted correctly when it had reclassified the criminal offense and when it had declared Todosijevic guilty of the criminal offense under Article 147, paragraph 1 of the Criminal Law.

The appeals panel found the defense's claims that in this particular case, it had not been a criminal offense, but a verbal offense, that is, the right to freedom of expression, to be groundless.

"Such statements of the defendant, in the context of the circumstances, fully reflect the intent of hatred," it is stated.

Ivan Todosijevic was sentenced in the first instance at the end of 2019 in Pristina to two years in prison for the statement he made at the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the NATO bombing in Zvecan when he stated that the Racak case had been fabricated and used as a pretext for the bombing.

The first-instance decision was later confirmed by the Court of Appeal in Pristina, and Todosijevic's defense attorneys then appealed to the Supreme Court, whose panel decided to return the case for a retrial.