GI SDP: EULEX employs double standards

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA - The Citizens' Initiative "Freedom, Democracy, Justice" (GI SDP), whose leader Oliver Ivanovic is imprisoned, accused the EULEX judiciary of employing double standards towards Serb and Albanian defendants.

The latest actions showing double standards of the EULEX judiciary have once again discredited their commitment to the rule of law and justice, GI SDP stated in a release on Friday.

Only two days after the EULEX prosecutor issued an indictment against Ivanovic and put forward a proposal to extend his detention, the court granted pretrial release to Ismet Hadza, a member of Drenica Group charged with war crimes against civilians in Likovac in 1998 and 1999.

It is a scandal unprecedented in legal history, GI SDP stressed, noting that Hadza had obstructed the proceedings by hiding in the Pristina Clinical Center.

On the other hand, each request to release Ivanovic pending trial has been dismissed citing the same “justification”.

Ivanovic was not even allowed to walk just 300 m away from the court building and visit the family of his close associate, whose mother had passed away. However, the court allowed Sabit Geci (ethnic Albanian charged with war crimes committed in 1999) to attend the funeral of a man he never met, in a place 40 km away from the hospital where he was kept (instead of a detention unit).

The list of double standards is long and invariably favoring ethnic Albanians, and this is a true insult to all Serbs living in Kosovo-Metohija, the release states.

Ivanovic was arrested on January 27 and the indictment was served on him on August 11.

The Serbian government issued guarantees that in case of Ivanovic's release from detention pending trial...