A man identified as H.S., charged with espionage, pleaded not guilty before a Kosovo court this week.
According to the indictment, seen by Koha, H.S. allegedly cooperated with Serbia’s Security and Information Agency (BIA) for nearly 16 years. The document claims that, at BIA’s request, he joined the terrorist group ISIS in Syria to provide information on ethnic Albanians fighting in the Middle East.
H.S.’s lawyer, Ali Beka, asked the court to lift his client’s detention, arguing that the legal grounds for keeping him in custody no longer exist. Special prosecutor Bekim Kodraliu opposed the motion.
“During the application of special investigative measures, it was established that the defendant continuously operated on Serbian territory… given the seriousness of the criminal offense… as well as the risk of repeating it… we propose extending the detention measure,” Kodraliu told the court.
Judge Leon Përlaska rejected the defense request and ruled that the security conditions for keeping H.S. in custody remain in place, Koha reports.
H.S. was arrested on May 6 on suspicion of providing information to Serbia’s BIA and has been held in custody since then. Known by the alias “Abusead Kosova,” he was previously convicted in 2022 for being part of ISIS during the Syrian conflict.
The indictment also includes a transcript of a statement in which H.S. allegedly demanded a house in Ulcinj worth €500,000, a good car, and a monthly payment of €1,000 from BIA in exchange for traveling to Syria.
It further claims that H.S. maintained direct contact with BIA’s director for counterterrorism, identified as I.B., and another individual, meeting them in Vranje, Niš and Bujanovac. Prosecutors said they also reached out to Kosovo’s Intelligence Agency (KIA) for information regarding a person named Babić.
According to the indictment, H.S. crossed the Bela Zemlja border crossing eight times in 2023 and 2024, traveling to Serbia and returning the same day. In one of these trips, Kosovo security institutions reportedly tracked him from his apartment in Pristina to Vranje, where photographs were taken of his meeting with I.B. and another man, identified only as N.
Following his arrest, investigators seized three mobile phones from H.S., which allegedly contained extensive materials intended for BIA. In one SMS exchange, H.S. expressed concern over the arrest of two others, B.Sh. and M.Q., on suspicion of espionage, Koha writes.
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