Detention on remand extended for Oliver Ivanovic

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA – Another two-month extension of detention on remand has been ordered for Oliver Ivanovic, leader of the Citizens’ Initiative ‘Freedom, Democracy, Justice’ (SDP), Nebojsa Vlajic, his lawyer, said Saturday.

Vlajic told Tanjug that he will appeal the decision.

EULEX said in a release Saturday that the pre-trial judge of the Mitrovica Basic Court ordered that detention on remand for Oliver Ivanovic be extended until June 27.

The release says that Ivanovic is suspected of war crimes and aggravated murder.

The pre-trial judge found that the risk of flight and the risk that the defendant might influence witnesses if released continues to exist and that there are no less severe measures that could be imposed at this time.

The SDP leader was arrested on January 27, on suspicion of involvement in crimes allegedly committed in Kosovo-Metohija in 1999-2000, including an aggravated murder.

After more than a month in detention in Pristina, Ivanovic went on a hunger strike for about one week, demanding to be transferred to a detention unit in north Kosovska Mitrovica, which was granted on March 12.

Ivanovic is one of the detained Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija for whom the Serbian government offered guarantees to EULEX to the effect that they will be available to the local judiciary at any time in exchange for their release pending trial.

The incidents Ivanovic was allegedly involved in were already addressed by the UNMIK judiciary in KiM in 2001, when Igor Simic was tried for involvement in incidents of April 14, 1999, and in the 2003 trial of Steva Zigic for incidents of February 3, 2000.

Both proceedings ended with an acquittal verdict and in both cases many...