PRISTINA -- A court in the Kosovar capital on June 28 sentenced four people to prison terms for complicity in the 2018 assassination of moderate ethnic Serb politician Oliver Ivanovic.
Ivanovic, 64, was killed on January 16, 2018, with four shots in the back as he arrived at his party office in the northern part of Mitrovica, a town bitterly divided between Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs, who dominate the northern part of the town.
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Ivanovic became known as a relative moderate in favor of dialogue and compromise between ethnic Serbs and Albanians after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008.
He was also seen as one of the chief interlocutors for international organizations seeking to bring stability and the rule of law to the country.
The Basic Court in Pristina sentenced North Mitrovica citizen Marko Rosic to 10 years in prison and a 10,000 euro ($10,700) fine on a charge of participating in an organized criminal group that orchestrated the killing of Ivanovic.
On the same charge, the court sentenced ex-police officer Nedelko Spasojevic to 4 1/2 years in prison and a 4,500 euro ($4,800) fine.
Two other ex-policemen, Dragisa Markovic and Zarko Ivanovic, were sentenced each to four years in prison for abuse of an official position, while the latter was also fined 1,550 euros ($1,660) for the unauthorized possession of firearms.
Ivanovic's secretary, Silvana Arsovic, was found not guilty of being part of the criminal group and was acquitted.
The defendants were not present in court during the reading of the verdict.
Earlier this week, ex-police officer Rade Basara was also acquitted of being a member of the criminal group that organized the killing.
Three other suspects -- Zeljko Bojic, Milan Radoicic, and Zvonk Veselinovic -- remain at-large.
Tensions between majority Albanians and ethnic Serbs remain high after the former province of Serbia declared independence almost a decade after the war with Yugoslavia that was quelled by NATO intervention.
Ivanovic was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2016 for war crimes committed during the 1998-99 war, but the verdict was annulled on appeal in 2017 and a new trial was ordered at the time of his assassination.