Appellate Court orders home detention for attorneys

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA - The Appellate Court in Pristina has put in home detention two attorneys from Kosovska Mitrovica, Dejan A. Vasic and Faruk Korenica, who are suspected of influencing and threatening witnesses in the ongoing court proceedings.

The Appellate Court in Pristina thus changed the previous decision of the Basic Court in northern Mitrovica that banned attorneys from coming close to witnesses and replaced it with home detention.
"By banning us from leaving house, the court has definitively made it impossible for attorney Korenica and me to defend Zarko Veselinovic whom we represented in the last nine months," Attorney Dejan Vasic told Tanjug.

Vasic said that the measure would also make it impossible for him to defend clients in other sensitive cases such as the ones concerning Laza Lazic, Dragoljub Delibasic, Srecko Martinovic, Nenad Stojkovic and others.

An international prosecutor with the EULEX Prosecution Office Pascal Persoons said earlier that the two attorneys had been arrested over the suspicion that they both influenced and even threatened witnesses in the ongoing court proceedings.

The arrest of the two attorneys in late March triggered north Kosovo Serbs' reactions, and they even threatened to "deny the presence" to EULEX in northern Kosovo, unless the attorneys are released.

Vasic and Korenica are considered excellent professionals. Following their arrest on March 25, the Serbian Bar Association issued a release, saying that their detention constitutes a serious human rights violation.

Photo Tanjug, S.Radovanovic