Nezir Mehmetaj has been held in prison in Serbia for 4 years, family says he was in KLA

Today, it has been four years since Nezir Mehmetaj from the municipality of Klina was cuffed and held in Serbia. He was sending his mother for health control in Belgrade, when Serbian police arrested him under suspicion that he was a member of the KLA, who allegedly committed several crimes in Kline during the war in 1999. Family says Neziri was not a soldier, and during the trial, no witnesses identified him as part of the KLA.

The doors of the Mehmetaj family's home in the village of Rudica, Kline, are open.

The whole family is at Peja Hospital. The health situation of Nezir Mehmetaj's mother, who has been held in Serbia for four years, has deteriorated.

She and her son split up at the border checkpoint in Merdar on January 7, 2020, while Neziri was sending him for a health check in Serbia.

The years have passed, and Neziri São returned to the home where she grew up in Rudice and to her wife and children in Switzerland, where she had a permit.

Neziri Mehmetaj's house had formed local headquarters UCK's for Rudica village in 1998. Nezir Mehmetaj is being held in Serbian prisons from January 4th of 2020, on charges of committing war crimes against the non-Albanian population during the war in Kosovo.

But his brothers said about RTK's behind the cameras, that he was never a soldier in the last war in Kosovo.

His defence has recently urged family members not to plead for the media, because they are undermining the judicial process against Nezir.

But the case said that during the court procedure, which has lasted nearly three years, numerous witnesses have been heard. However, they have not been able to confirm whether Neziri has participated in the events he is accused of.

Mehmetaj himself, since the first day at the tribunal, has denied that he was a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

After 35 hearings in the judicial process were held against him in June 2023, a request was made for the whole process to be turned into retrial. Family members say he has been continued with the detention measure and that, according to defence, there is currently no date for the next session.

Serbian authorities had active arrest warrants for Neziri, in doubt that as a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army in the town of Kline, he participated in the murder and torture of at least seven persons, Serbs and Roma.

Kosovo institutions have consistently sought the release or extradition of Nezir Mehmetaj to Kosovo. One of them is Justice Minister Albulen Haxhiu.

Family members hope that Nezir will be acquitted of charges attributed to Serbian authorities and return to the family in Kosovo and Switzerland. / RTK