Arrested Serb "victim of political, unlawful persecution"

Arrested Serb "victim of political, unlawful persecution"

This was announced by the Serbian Government Office for Kosovo and Metohija (KiM), which assessed that the arrest was the consequence of "a political diktat."

"That is why D.T, after Bogdan Mitrovic and Milanka Terzic, became the latest victim of a system whose task is to conduct a campaign of intimidation against the Serb people and create an atmosphere of unease in our southern province," the Office said in a statement on Thursday.

Before his arrest, D.T. was able to move unimpeded across Kosovo and Metohija and there was nothing indicating any kind of proceedings against him, as was the case with some of the earlier detentions of war crimes suspects, the statement added.

"Arresting people based on unreliable testimonies and secret indictments and warrants is in the function of attempting to create an artificial balance in prosecuting war crimes, ahead of the the start of work of the specialist court for the crimes committed by the so-called KLA ('Kosovo Liberation Army'), which is unacceptable both from a legal and a moral point of view," the Office said.

The statement further assessed that the result of "such campaigns" cannot be reconciliation, but only even deeper distrust between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija, and for that reason appealed on international organizations and institutions to engage in these cases and prevent new instances of abusing the police and the judiciary to persecute Serbs.

The Office said it demanded that these victims of political and unlawful persecution be release - and added that "in the meantime" they provided a lawyer and means for legal representation to D.T.

KiM-based Radio Kontakt Plus reported on Thursday, citing lawyer Dejan A. Vasic, that the suspect, whom they named as Darko Tasic, had been remanded in prison for one month.

According to this, the decision was made at the proposal of the EULEX special prosecutor for war crimes, Paul Flynn.

Tasic is an internally displaced person originally from the town of Prizren, who is suspected of committing war crimes during the war in Kosovo. As a member of MUP reserve units, he along with several other Serbs allegedly burned and looted ethnic Albanian property in Mala Krusa near Orahovac.