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The Pristina Court sentenced Goran Stanisic to 20 years in prison for participating in the murder of 13 Albanians during the Kosovo War.
The Pristina Court sentenced a former Serbian policeman to 20 years in prison for his involvement in the murder of 13 Albanian civilians during the Kosovo War in the 1990s.
A court statement on Tuesday stated that he was involved in a 1999 “large-scale and systematic attack” by Serbian police and paramilitary forces against Albanian civilians in Slovakia and the neighboring village of Tbov, 25 kilometers (15 miles) away. South of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.
The court referred to him only by the abbreviation GS, but the Kosovo media identified him as Goran Stanisic.
The surviving witnesses (mainly women) testified that they had seen him many times in armed groups that placed men in front of walls and shot them in front of their wives, mothers and daughters.
“Through these crimes, he cooperated with others to commit war crimes against the people,” the verdict said.
The court added that former members of the Serbian Reserve Police Force were not only convicted of murder, but also convicted of participating in the deportation of local civilians.
The Kosovo human rights organization said that the Serbian army’s attacks on Slovenia and Tebov caused 45 deaths, 11 wounded, and nearly 100 Albanian houses burned down. Hundreds of people were forced to flee.
Sentences against members of the Kosovo and Serbian armed forces are rare-because the lack of diplomatic relations makes it impossible to extradite suspects from one territory to another.
According to the indictment, Stanischi was from the village of Slovic where the murder occurred. He fled to Serbia after the war but was arrested while trying to cross the border in 2019.
Stanisic, who denies the charges, can still appeal.
The 1998-1999 war between the Kosovo Albanian rebels seeking independence and the Serbian armed forces killed approximately 13,000 people, most of them ethnic Albanians.
It ended after a three-month NATO bombing operation forced Belgrade to withdraw troops and hand over the governance of the area to the United Nations.
In 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. It is recognized as a sovereign state by about 100 countries-but Serbia and its allies Russia and China do not recognize it.
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