Kosovar authorities have indicted 45 people over their alleged roles in an attack last year by ethnic Serbs that left one police officer dead in the village of Banjska.
Prosecutor Naim Abazi said on September 11 that among those indicted is Milan Radoicic, the fugitive former vice president of the Serbian List party accused of leading and organizing the September 2023 attack. He is believed to be in Serbia.
The names of the others indicted in the case have not been released.
SEE ALSO: Extradition To Kosovo Of Monastery Attack Suspect 'Impossible,' Serbian FM SaysAbazi said those indicted had different roles within their criminal group "ranging from organizing and directing terrorist activities to financing and money laundering."
He said the investigation had been the most complex that his office had ever conducted and required intensive investigation involving both national and international law enforcement agencies.
"We have conducted approximately 66 interviews with witnesses and defendants, analyzed around 120 electronic devices, about 1,266 weapons and other equipment, and obtained hundreds of documents containing critical evidence for this case," Abazi said.
Abazi thanked the United States and the European Union for cooperating with Kosovar authorities, which he said helped bring strong indictments against the 45 individuals.
"Given that the Republic of Kosovo unfortunately did not have laboratories available to examine most of this evidence and required international legal assistance from various countries, it can be said that this indictment was filed in an extremely short time frame," Ehat Miftaraj, executive director of the nongovernmental Kosovo Law Institute, told RFE/RL.
Miftaraj added that details on the indictment are still needed "to know whether the indictment also addresses acts related to state aggression against the Republic of Kosovo, or if it is solely about a well-organized criminal group led by Radoicic that carried out the actions specified in the indictment."
During the attack, around 30 ethnic Serb gunmen ambushed a police patrol in Banjska, a village near the border with Serbia, killing Sergeant Afrim Bunjaku, an ethnic Albanian Kosovar police officer.
SEE ALSO: Who Was Behind The Deadly Attack At The Orthodox Monastery In Kosovo?The attackers then made a stand in an Orthodox monastery and exchanged fire with Kosovar forces. Three gunmen were ultimately killed.
Radoicic, who claimed the attack, stepped down from his position in the Serbian List party days after the incident.
Nenad Stefanovic, chief prosecutor of the Prosecutor-General's Office in Serbia, played down the indictment of Radoicic.
"From the perspective of the legal order of the Republic of Serbia, the indictment by the provisional institutions in Pristina against Milan Radoicic and others is of no importance," Radio Television of Serbia quoted Stefanovic as saying.
The attack came months after talks backed by Washington and Brussels between Kosovo and Serbia collapsed, and relations between the bitter neighbors and rivals have only deteriorated further.
Belgrade and its ally Russia still refuse to recognize Kosovo's sovereignty since a 2008 declaration of independence that followed a decade of UN administration after a bloody ethnically fueled war.