(Belgrade) Serbian police arrested on Tuesday a businessman and political leader of the Kosovo Serbs, Milan Radoicic, accused by Kosovo of being the leader of the commando who killed a Kosovar policeman at the end of September, provoking one of the most serious escalations in relations between Belgrade and Pristina in years.
Milan Radoicic, 45, was placed in pre-trial detention for 48 hours and referred to the Belgrade prosecutor’s office, the Serbian Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The police carried out searches in his apartment and other property belonging to him, adds the ministry, without specifying where the suspect was arrested, or where the searches took place.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said last week that Radoicic was in “central Serbia”.
The latter then, through his lawyer, claimed to be at the origin of the commando.
PHOTO ANDREJ ISAKOVIC, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Milan Radoicic has long been the vice-president of the Serbian List (Srpska lista), the main political group of the Kosovo Serbs. He resigned from his position after the latest incidents.
Suspected of “criminal association” with the aim of committing “serious offenses against public security”, Radoicic “denied the accusations”, indicated in the afternoon the Prosecutor’s Office, which proposed to a judge to instruction to keep him in detention due to the “danger of flight”.
The Prosecutor’s Office specified that Radoicic was suspected of having obtained “weapons, ammunition and explosive devices” from Bosnia between January and September, and of having then transported and stored them in Kosovo, until the day of the attack on September 24.
The President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, demanded in an interview on CNN on Tuesday that “Radoicic and other terrorists be handed over to the Republic of Kosovo, so that justice can be done.”
Radoicic has long been considered the most influential Serbian politician in northern Kosovo, and close to the power in Belgrade. He has been targeted by American sanctions since 2021, suspected of organized crime and corruption.
Northern Kosovo, a Serb-majority area regularly shaken by tensions, was the scene of clashes on September 24 between the special forces of the Kosovar police and a heavily armed paramilitary commando.
Initially, a Kosovar police officer was killed and another injured on a barricade set up at the entrance to the village of Banjska, 15 km from the Serbian border.
The Kosovar police then launched an operation against this group, which had taken refuge in a monastery of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Three of its members, all Kosovo Serbs, were killed, three others arrested. The others fled, including Milan Radoicic.
The day after these clashes, Kosovo’s Interior Minister, Xhelal Sveçla, accused Radoicic of being commando leader.
These 24 hours have generated the highest tensions in years between Serbia and Kosovo, with the United States accusing Belgrade in particular of massing men at the border in recent days.
“We’ve started to see them withdrawing their forces and that’s a good thing,” John Kirby, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, said on Tuesday. “This will help with de-escalation. Not eliminate tensions, but help de-escalate.”
“Dream of freedom”
“I myself carried out all the logistical preparations” and “I did not inform anyone in the institutions of power of the Republic of Serbia […] nor did I get any help from them,” he said in a letter read by his lawyer in Belgrade.
The objective was, he explained, “to create the conditions to realize the dream of freedom of [son] people in northern Kosovo.
Serbia refuses to recognize the independence that its former southern province, with an Albanian majority, proclaimed in 2008.
A third of the approximately 120,000 Kosovo Serbs live in the north, a region bordering Serbia where Pristina wishes to establish its sovereignty.
Milan Radoicic has long been the vice-president of the Serbian List (Srpska lista), the main political group of the Kosovo Serbs. He resigned from his position after the latest incidents.
Kosovar police last week carried out searches of his properties in northern Kosovo, including a luxurious villa on the shores of Lake Gazivode (northwest).
The Kosovar Minister of the Interior declared that this building would be seized, because it was built on state land, and that it would be transformed into a police station.