In Serbia, the alleged leader of the commando who killed a police officer in Kosovo was arrested

Milan Radoicic, alleged leader of the commando who killed a Kosovar police officer at the end of September and who is wanted by Kosovo, was arrested on Tuesday October 3 in Serbia, the Serbian Interior Ministry announced.

Milan Radoicic was placed in pre-trial detention and handed over to the Belgrade prosecutor’s office, the ministry announced in a press release. Serbian police carried out searches in his apartment, according to the same source, without specifying the location of the arrest or that of the searches.

On September 24, in northern Kosovo – a Serb-majority area – clashes took place between Kosovo police special forces and an armed paramilitary commando, whose alleged leader is Milan Radoicic. A Kosovar police officer was killed and another injured on a barricade set up at the entrance to the village of Banjska, fifteen kilometers from the Serbian border.

The Kosovar police then launched a major 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 and three arrested. The others fled, including Mr. Radoicic. The incident caused serious tensions to resurface on the border separating Serbia and Kosovo.

“Dream of freedom” for Kosovo Serbs

Mr. Radoicic is a businessman and vice-president of the Serbian List (“Srpska lista”), the main political group of the Kosovo Serbs, from which he resigned last week. The suspect had already been questioned for the first time on Saturday by the Serbian police. Days earlier, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that Mr. Radoicic was in “central Serbia” and was available for questioning by Serbian authorities.

Warned by Washington, Serbia claimed Monday to have brought the level of its troops “to normal” along the border with Kosovo, which accused it of having planned to “annex” its territories in the North .

Accused by the Minister of the Interior of Kosovo, Xhelal Sveçla, of having been the leader of the commando, Mr. Radoicic himself claimed, through his lawyer in Belgrade, to have set up and equipped this group, without Belgrade’s knowledge. The objective of his act was, he explained, “to create the conditions to realize the dream of freedom of [his] people in northern Kosovo.”

Serbia refuses to recognize the independence that its former southern province, with its Albanian majority, proclaimed in 2008. A third of Kosovo’s approximately 120,000 Serbs (population 1.8 million) live in northern Kosovo. Kosovo, border region with Serbia where Pristina wishes to establish its sovereignty. Supported by Belgrade, they refuse all allegiance to the government of Kosovo.