Serbia sentences Kosovo for war crimes

Belgrade's Supreme Court sentenced the alleged member of the Kosovo Liberation Army during wartime, Petrit Dula, to two years in prison for participating in the beating of a civilian in Kosovo in 1999.

Judge Snezana Nikolic Garotic told Belgrade's Supreme Court on Tuesday that Petrit Dula was found guilty of committing a war crime, assaulting a civilian in a village near the town of Gjakova in Kosovo in June 1999, reports BalkanInsight.

Nikolic Garotic said Dula was sentenced on the basis of witness testimony and that he had received an easy sentence due to extenuating circumstances.

The trial dropped the sentence because it took into account numerous extenuating circumstances such as the accused's family circumstances and his attitude to crime”- she explained.

According to the indictment, in the second half of June 1999, alleged member of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Dula, along with some unidentified persons, forcibly captured civilian Gazmend Kryeziu from a house in a village near the town of Gjakova in Kosovo.

He was taken to Dula's home, where Dula had brutally mistreated the civilian, physically violated him, and injured him.

The indictment claimed that Dula struck Kryeziu with a baseball bat, threw a bottle at him and hit his left ear over with a full bottle while he was sitting in a chair with his hands tied, while other KLA members hit him with a rifle and hit him with fists and kicks.

They later transported him to a KLA headquarters in the village of Babaloq, where other unknown KLA members continued to abuse him and asked where other soldiers and relatives who died during the war were buried and if he participated in the war by the Serb side.

He was released the following day at the order of the unidentified commander of the KLA headquarters in Babaloq.
Dula was acquitted at the beginning of the trial in September.

He claimed He Was Not a Member The NLA had no weapons or uniform. He has also said that during the Kosovo war he was in Bulgaria.

However, Judge Garotic said the court confirmed that he was a member of the KLA.

He was convicted despite the alleged victim Kryeziu said in court in October that the defendant “is not the man who participated in his beating.

He denied that he specifically appointed Dula as one of the authors when questioned by Serbian investigators in Podgorica in 2011.

Two other witnesses said to be Kryeziu's wives also changed their testimony during the trial in Belgrade not to incriminate Dula.

But Nikolic Garotic said one of the investigators who first received the evidence in 2011 told the court that they spoke freely and that their testimony procession was read to him again.