Kosovo Court Struggles to Contact Ivanovic Murder Trial Witnesses

Valon Kurtaj, head of the judging panel in the trial of defendants accused of involvement in the 2018 assassination of Kosovo Serb political party leader Oliver Ivanovic, told Pristina Basic Court on Tuesday that the court is facing a series of difficulties in contacting witnesses who live in Serb-majority parts of Kosovo and in Serbia itself.

"We have problems with the postal services in the [Serb-majority] north [of Kosovo]," Kurtaj said after one defendant's lawyer complained that the witnesses who testified on Tuesday were not the ones who were previously announced.

Kurtaj explained that the court has sent summons but has not received confirmations from some witnesses, mainly because the Kosovo postal service has problems with delivering mail in Kosovo's Serb-majority northern municipalities.

"I cannot fix the postal problems… I can only send invitations," the judge said.

He added that another issue is non-cooperation from the authorities in Serbia, who do not recognise Kosovo's independence or the legitimacy of its judiciary.

"Some of the witnesses are in Vojvodina [region of Serbia] and [the summons to testify] goes via international judicial assistance, through which Serbia does not cooperate with us at all," Kurtaj explained.

"We are bringing the witnesses that we can secure, until we exhaust these. Then we will see [what to do about the remaining witnesses]," he said.

The defendants' lawyers have repeatedly complained that the testimonies of the witnesses called so far have been irrelevant.

"Please, in future do not call witnesses that are not related to the indictment," Faruk Korenica, lawyer for defendant Nedeljko Spasojevic, told the court on Tuesday.

Oliver Ivanovic, then leader of the...