Nicic: I hope for a reaction from international institutions – My father has been innocently held in solitary confinement for a year

Bojan Nicic from Pasjane near Gnjilane told Kosovo Online that he expects a reaction from the international institutions in Kosovo, as well as justice for his father, Dragan Nicic (67), who has been in detention for a year on charges that he committed war crimes against the civilian population in 1999.

“I have reached out to everyone I thought could help: Serbian and Kosovo institutions, international organizations, KFOR, the UN, the U.S., British, and Swiss embassies, UNICEF, representatives of international missions… So far, I haven’t received a single concrete answer. I still hope that at least the international institutions will react and realize that this is about innocent people who have already been in detention for a year and nine days without evidence, without arguments, without anything,” Nicic said.

In an operation by KP special units on August 3 last year, Dragan Nicic, Slobodan Jevric, Dragan Cvetkovic, and Milos Sosic were arrested in Pasjane, while in the village of Bosce near Kosovska Kamenica, Nenad Stojanovic was arrested.

All of them pleaded not guilty in mid-January, and one of them has since been released to await trial in freedom.

Dragan’s son, Bojan Nicic, on behalf of the family, sent an open letter yesterday to all international institutions in Kosovo, expecting them to help “correct the injustice” and vowing not to stop “until the injustice is corrected.”

“As for my father, I can say with certainty that he doesn’t know how to handle either a pistol or a rifle, let alone commit some heinous act. That is simply impossible, unbelievable. I know my father,” Nicic said emotionally.

He revealed that his father, Dragan Nicic, has already been in solitary confinement for a year and is physically weak, but “mentally holding on for the sake of the family.”

“He has been in solitary for a year now, needlessly isolated from other people. Physically, he is weak, but mentally he is hanging on. He tries his best because of us. He gives us strength even though we see that he has less and less of it.

The hardest part for us is this injustice and the fact that he has been separated from the family without any evidence.

There is nothing, and we are struggling to cope with it,” Nicic stressed.

He added that no one in their family has ever had trouble with the law, especially not with being in prison, which is why it is a shock for the whole family that they can see Dragan only twice a month and only with court approval.

“We constantly go through searches, harassment. Sometimes they let us bring him some food they don’t have there, sometimes they don’t… This is our first encounter with such conditions because we have never before been in a situation to visit someone in prison. But as they say, there’s a first time for everything,” Nicic said bitterly.

Every visit, he emphasized, is under controlled conditions.

“When we see each other, it is always through glass, without physical contact. There is always a guard with us,” Nicic described.

He added that his father had spent his whole life trying to provide his family with a decent living through honest work.

He stated that from 1985 to 1991, Dragan Nicic worked as a teacher and that most of his pupils were Albanian children.

After that, until 1999, he worked as a porter at “Zitopromet.”

“After that, he was unemployed for four years. He worked wherever he could find private jobs, just to feed the family — us: my brother, sister, and me. Then in 2003, he returned to his profession, in education, from which he retired in 2023,” Nicic explained.