Family of Serb arrested in Leposavić denies war crimes charges, asserts he never stayed in Djakovica

Family of Serb arrested in Leposavić denies war crimes charges, asserts he never stayed in Djakovica

Pristina authorities arrested ethnic Serb Srdjan Lazović in Leposavić yesterday on charges of war crimes allegedly committed in the Djakovica region in 1999. Lazović was escorted to Pristina and remanded a 48-hour custody. The Lazović family, however, vehemently denied the accusations of war crimes, stressing that he never even visited Djakovica and that he was deployed in the north of Kosovo during the war. They expressed hope that he would be released and that „the Kosovo authorities will realize that they made a mistake.“

The Kosovo police announced on Thursday that on June 20 this year, after several months of investigative work, they submitted a criminal complaint to the Special Prosecutor’s Office against ethnic Serb S. L.

„There is a suspicion that this person, individually and as a co-perpetrator, committed the crime of ‘War crime against the civilian population’ during the war in Kosovo in the region of Djakovica (1998/1999),“ the police said.

The War Crimes Directorate of the Kosovo Police, in cooperation with the agents of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency and with the support of the police units of the region north, arrested S.L. in the municipality of Leposavić yesterday.

His house was then searched. According to the KP, the investigators „seized relevant evidence that will be processed in the further investigative procedure.“

In the meantime, the Kosovo Special Prosecutor’s Office reacted, confirming that he had been remanded a 48-hour custody.

They also specified that Lazović was charged with alleged war crimes committed in Mališevo.

What does the family of the arrested say?

In a statement for KoSSev, his wife, Marija Lazović, described the arrest of Srdjan Lazović, as well as the search of the house that was carried out afterward.

She revealed that before Lazović was arrested, they were returning from Raška with their child.

At the Jarinje crossing, she added, the Kosovo Police officers detained them for no longer than 15 minutes, then let them pass.

„On the way to our house, near Kratina, a large number of officers blocked the road, they told my husband to pull over after which they violently pulled him out of the car, threw him on the ground and then dragged him away. There was a small child in the car who was screaming at the top of his voice,“ said Lazović.

She states that a fellow citizen then drove her and the child home, where they found the same officers conducting a search. She adds that her mother-in-law and two daughters were in the house at that time.

While the police say that evidence was seized during the search, the interlocutor of KoSSev specified that the police found nothing.

„They were looking for something, but of course they found nothing, there was nothing to be found.“

Lazović states that they learned from the lawyer that her husband was detained and that he is in the war crimes department in Pristina.

„The lawyer went to see him. He saw him, and he told us that he was fine,“ she said.

He was not deployed in Djakovica during the war, but in the north

She learned from the lawyer that her husband was being charged with war crimes, which she denied.

„You are accusing him of some war crimes in Djakovica, that is, Mališevo, a place he has never been in,“ she stressed.

She claims that her husband served in the military in Prizren in 1995/96.

According to her, he was recruited during the war, and deployed in the municipality of Leposavić in the town of Vuča – not in Djakovica, that is, south of the Ibar.

Lazović also confirmed that her husband works in the MIA of Serbia, however, as she states, he was employed after the war in 2003/2004.

„He never worked in the police before that, he served in the army like everyone else,“ she adds.

The media published the photo, Lazović denies that it shows her husband

In their reports on the arrest, some media outlets in Albanian published two photos, allegedly showing Srdjan Lazović.

In the first photo, four men in Gendarmerie uniforms can be seen.

Lazović confirmed that one of them is her husband with his colleagues, noting that the photo was taken after he joined the Ministry of Interior of Serbia, and not during the war.

„It’s a photo we have in the house. He worked there, took pictures with his colleagues, relatively recently,“ she says.

Commenting on the second photo, which shows a policeman with a rifle walking past a group of people on their knees, which is assumed to have been taken during the war, Lazović denies that her husband is in it.

„He was shown that photo that has nothing to do with him. It is probably a photograph from Djakovica, but he was never there, for which there is evidence. He was shown that photo, where people are kneeling, it’s not him, he denied it,“ she added.

He was detained at the crossing on several occasions

The interlocutor of KoSSev emphasized that her husband never hid, and that he traveled to Serbia proper for work on a daily basis. Lazović, however, states that members of the Kosovo Police repeatedly stopped Srdjan at the Jarinje crossing, where they would shortly detain him.

„They constantly stopped him at the crossing, which he did not pay much attention to because he had never done anything, he was not guilty of anything. Sometimes they kept him for five minutes, sometimes for an hour, and it was always – ‘sorry, it was a mistake’. The first time they searched him at the crossing, when it came down to it, they told him it was a mistake and that his mother’s name matched a man they were looking for. If he hadn’t been aware that he was clean and hadn’t done anything, he wouldn’t have returned after the first time he was stopped at the crossing. He wouldn’t be supporting his family here if he was guilty. He never hid, he had no need to hide,“ said Lazović.

Custody hearing

Lazović will be brought before the court todatoll determine the detention measure. Marija hopes that the Kosovo authorities „will realize again that they made a mistake“ and that he will be released.

„I hope and trust in justice and God that it will end, but I don’t believe them, you know how the situation unfolds here. We are powerless and I will do anything to get him out, but we are powerless. I just hope for justice, that they will realize that it was a mistake and that they will release him,“ concludes Lazović.