Nebojsa Vlajic

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA - Pristina's basic court in northern Kosovska Mitrovica has placed four young Serb men arrested on Tuesday for an alleged attack on an officer on duty in 30-day house arrest, attorney Nebojsa Vlajic told Tanjug on Wednesday evening.

Vlajic said the accused could be only partly satisfied with the court's decision.

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA - Pristina's basic court in northern Kosovska Mitrovica has placed four young Serb men arrested on Tuesday for an alleged attack on an officer on duty in 30-day house arrest, attorney Nebojsa Vlajic told Tanjug on Wednesday evening.

Vlajic said the accused could be only partly satisfied with the court's decision.

PRISTINA - The lawyer of a Kosovo-Metohija Serb arrested by Pristina's authorities on Sunday confirmed to Tanjug on Monday he had appealed a decision by the Pristina Basic Court to place his client in 30-day custody.

BELGRADE - The head of the Serbian government Office for Kosovo-Metohija Petar Petkovic said on Wednesday Uros Vukasinovic, a Kosovo-Metohija Serb arrested in Leposavic on June 17, had reunited with his family after being released from custody.

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA - Former Zvecan mayor Ivan Todosijevic, a Kosovo-Metohija Serb convicted by a Pristina basic court to one year in prison for inciting "hatred, discord and intolerance" has been acquitted of all charges by Pristina's supreme court, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

The ruling is final, Nebojsa Vlajic told Tanjug.

Residents of the Serb-majority northern Kosovo municipality of Leposavic have been taking shifts since February, camping in a tent on a road that leads to the village of Dren, trying to stop heavy machinery from restarting construction of a police station on expropriated land in the village.

Ivan Todosijevic, a Kosovo Serb MP from the Belgrade-backed Srpska Lista party, did not appear on Wednesday at noon as ordered by the court to begin his two-year prison sentence for inciting ethnic, racial or religious intolerance.

Florent Gashi, spokesperson for the Kosovo Correctional Service told BIRN that "the person in question so far has not appeared to serve his sentence".

The lawyer for murdered political party leader Oliver Ivanovic said on Tuesday that allegations made by Malcolm Simmons, former head judge at the EU's rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, showed that the war crimes prosecution of the Kosovo Serb politician was a "fabricated court case".

"There will not be indictments for at least a year, that is, until Belgrade-Pristina negotiations in Brussels have been completed," an unnamed source, "close to Pristina authorities," is quoted as telling this newspaper.

Courts in the north of Kosovo are plagued with stalled trials and postponed hearings, which some blame on a backlog of cases and lack of translators, while others claim that the courts themselves are not doing enough.