Kosovo Serb

Testifying via video link from Serbia at Pristina Basic Court on Friday, Milena Popovic, the widow of murdered Kosovo Serb opposition politician Oliver Ivanovic, said her husband did not voice any concerns about his safety before he was shot dead in the north of the ethnically-divided city of Mitrovica in January 2018.

The newly elected mayor of the Kosovo-Serb majority municipality of North Mitrovica took his oath of office on Friday in a tense atmosphere following extraordinary local elections a month ago that most local Serbs shunned. 

Erden Atic is a member of the ruling Vetvendosje party, which has few members in the town.

Members of the Serbian parliament, from both the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, SNS, and opposition, came into physical conflict during a debate about the former province of Kosovo and a European proposal to resolve Serbia-Kosovo relations.

A witness at the trial for the 2018 killing of Kosovo Serb political party leader Oliver Ivanovic told Pristina Basic Court on Monday that he lived in constant fear for his life for years because of threats from people linked to the Belgrade-backed Kosovo Serb political party Srpska Lista.

Belgrade Higher Court has dismissed a defamation case launched by controversial Kosovo Serb businessman and politician Milan Radoicic against rival Kosovo Serb politician Rada Trajkovic, who accused him of being implicated in the shooting of Oliver Ivanovic in 2018.

The Court of Appeals in Pristina on Tuesday confirmed the third version of the indictment accusing six people of being part of an alleged organised criminal group that was responsible for the killing of Kosovo Serb political party leader Oliver Ivanovic in January 2018, clearing the way for the start of the trial.

The Belgrade-backed Kosovo Serb party Srpska Lista submitted a complaint to Kosovo's Constitutional Court on Monday, seeking a ruling against the decision of Prime Minister Albin Kurti to give them only one ministry in his new cabinet instead of the usual two.

The move comes one week after Kosovo's parliament elected Vetevendosje head Albin Kurti as Prime Minister.

Milan Radoicic, vice-president of the Srpska Lista party. Photo courtesy of N1.

"The Special Prosecution requested the withdrawal of the warrant and the court, acting upon the request, has lifted it," Kurtaj, the presiding judge in the Ivanovic murder case, told BIRN.

The prosecution declined to comment, saying that "this is an internal issue".

Kosovo Serb politician Nenad Rasic, the head of Progressive Democratic Party, told BIRN on Tuesday after the arrest of eight people in connection with the attack on his son Nikola that he believes the assault was politically motivated.

"This was not a fight between adolescents but an attempted murder," Rasic said of the attack on Monday outside a school in the village of Lapnaselo.

Our communities have always been kept in degrading conditions and excluded from society, partly in order to make sure that poor non-Roma did not rebel against their lot in life. Even now, in many villages the 'best' Roma is the guy who still works for the locals, morning to evening, for whatever they will give him - "the best Roma in the village".