Usurpation of land owned by Serbs in Kosovo with the help of forged documents

In the past few months, several cases have been recorded in the vicinity of Pristina involving the sale of land owned by Serbs on the basis of forged documents and without their knowledge. The buyers are Albanians, and the problem also has a regional dimension, as the forged documents were certified in Montenegro. In recent days, police have arrested several individuals on suspicion of participating in fraud and illegal sales, RTS reports.

The Mitic family from Caglavica near Pristina, by checking property records, learned that they were no longer the owners of part of their estate. Their field of almost one hectare on Veternik above Pristina has a new owner – an Albanian, RTS reports.

“We did not sell the land and it is owned by my father and his brothers and sisters. It was sold using forged ID cards of the owners, who allegedly granted authorization to a person from Kosovo of Albanian nationality before a notary in Podgorica and Tuzi in Montenegro,” says Dejan Mitic, the son of the property owner

The Mitic property is not the only one that was sold last year using forged ID cards with authorization from Montenegro.

“In conversations with notaries in Montenegro, they told us that there are currently around 50 authorizations that have been issued for Kosovo,” Mitic points out.

For the time being, the Mitic family has managed to obtain a court injunction prohibiting further transfer of their property and hopes to recover it as soon as possible.

Defrauded and convicted

In the past seven days, six people have been arrested at several locations in Kosovo on suspicion of selling other people’s land using forged documents. The case of the sale of thirty ares of land for one and a half million euros was reported by the injured owner and the defrauded buyer.

“Practice has shown that when the victims are Serbs, court proceedings and investigations last for years or decades, and even the victims end up in prison. I would remind you of the example of Dusko Arsic from Maticane, who was arrested a few months after filing a lawsuit because his land had been sold on the basis of forged documents,” Budimir Nicic from the Media Center in Caglavica emphasizes.

Dusko Arsic was convicted for the second time in Pristina for allegedly committing a war crime against Albanians.

“The situation is usually that someone uses a plot of land for years, and at the moment when the owner protests because an Albanian is unlawfully using the property, the owner is reported to the police, and then the Special Prosecutor’s Office takes over jurisdiction and they are criminally prosecuted for a war crime,” attorney Jovana Filipovic says.

Behind most unresolved cases of usurpation and sale of other people’s land, according to the general impression of our interlocutors, lies selective justice and the slowness of institutions.

By failing to resolve these cases, the authorities appear to be sending a message of encouragement to usurpers to continue their actions, and to property owners to give up their right to justice.