The Kosovo prosecution said it is investigating two new suspects in its probe into the January 2018 assassination of Kosovo Serb political party leader Oliver Ivanovic.
Syle Hoxha, the prosecutor working on the Oliver Ivanovic murder case, told BIRN on Tuesday that the probe has been widened to include two further suspects with possible links to organised crime.
KoSSev: This is not the first time, however, that prosecutor Hoxha announces that the investigation has been extended to investigate two more people. The very first time this information was announced was on the day of the arrest of three suspects for involvement in the Ivanovic assassination, on November 23, last year, at a second extraordinary press conference of Kosovo Police and Prosecution held on the arrest case.
However, despite announcements, the arrests of the suspects has neither occurred, nor indictments raised against them.
Also, in a recent interview with Belgrade based weekly NIN, Sulj Hoxha announced that the investigation was extended to „media campaigners“ against Ivanovic, but it also remains unknown how many people were involved in that part of the investigation, nor whether the two persons mentioned above were part of that investigation.
Pristina’s Gazeta Express also announced today that the investigation has been extended to two more people, with the addition of suspects living in North Mitrovica, that they are „young“ and allegedly involved in organized crime.
„Yes, we have expanded the investigation. There are two other people on the list. We’re working on their arrest. Their location is known, „said special prosecutor Hoxha Gazeta Express.
The newspaper also reports that there are currently six suspects in this case.
“We have expanded the investigation into the case with two more individuals. We are at the initial phase in which they are suspected of organised crime,” Hoxha said.
The two new suspects have not been named.
Ivanovic, the leader of the Freedom, Democracy, Justice party, was gunned down in front of his party’s office in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica on January 16, 2018.
The Kosovo authorities arrested four individuals in relation to the case in November 2018. Two of them are still remanded in custody.
The authorities also named Milan Radoicic, vice-president of the main Belgrade-backed Kosovo Serb political party, Srpska Lista, as a suspect.
Radoicic, a businessman, is widely seen as the real power-holder in Serb-majority northern Kosovo.
He avoided arrest on November 23 and moved to Serbia, where the authorities have asserted that he is innocent. He denies involvement in the murder of Ivanovic.
Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said in January that Serbia’s own investigation into the case was examining the movements of “certain individuals” who had appeared in Kosovo, then left for an unspecified Western European country.
Once seen as a hardline nationalist, Ivanovic had evolved into a political moderate who advocated coexistence between Kosovo’s Serb minority and Albanian majority.
He had also become increasingly vocal in his criticism of the Belgrade government.
At the time of his death, he was being retried for ordering the murder of Kosovo Albanians during the war in Kosovo in 1999. He pleaded not guilty.
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
