The Basic Court in Prizren has convicted a Serb from Kosovo, Darko Tasic, to 22 years in prison for the war crime committed in the spring of 1999 in Mala Krusa.
Tasic was accused of, as a member of the reserve police corps, taking part in the desecration of the bodies of the killed inhabitants, their burning, and throwing into the river. The maximum foreseen punishment was 15 years in prison.
Tasic’s lawyer, Dejan Vasic, said that the council of local judges had succumbed to the pressure of the public and passed a sentence unrecorded in the post-war judicial practice of Kosovo, being seven years above the legal maximum.
After the trial, the vehicle of the Kosovo prison service carrying Tasic was attacked by a group of Albanians, for the most part, inhabitants of the Mala Krusa village.
The Serbian government’s Office for Kosovo has announced that it would, on this occasion, address international organizations and estimated that the trial had been led with serious omissions, which also brought into question the Court’s impartiality.
Tasic was arrested in November 2017, after years living in central Serbia. Previously his family was forced to flee Kosovo.
Financuar Nga Bashkimi Europian
