\n A Serbian court Friday jailed a Kosovo citizen for a war crime during its independence struggle as tensions spiral between the Balkan neighbours.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Belgrade court said Nezir Mehmetaj was convicted for his role in the abduction of a Roma man during the war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in Kosovo in the late 1990s.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mehmetaj was jailed for six years by the Higher Court of Belgrade.\n<\/p>\n
\n Serbia and Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority, have been at loggerheads since the end of a war in the late 1990s between Belgrade's forces and ethnic Albanian separatists in what was then a province of Serbia.\n<\/p>\n
\n Serbia has never recognised Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence.\n<\/p>\n
\n Tensions are high between the two countries after Pristina blamed Serbia for an explosion targeting a strategic canal in northern Kosovo last weekend, with Prime Minister Albin Kurti calling the blast a \"terrorist attack\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Serbia has rejected the accusations.\n<\/p>\n
\n War crimes cases against Kosovar Albanians in Serbian courts are rare.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mehmetaj was arrested by Serbian police in January 2020 at the Merdare crossing between Kosovo and Serbia.\n<\/p>\n
\n Since then, he has been held in Belgrade, with the time spent in custody counted toward his sentence.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We will certainly appeal this verdict,\" Mehmetaj's lawyer Milic Konstantinovic told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"He was convicted on only one count of the indictment, which is based solely on the testimony of a protected witness,\" Konstantinovic added.\n<\/p>\n
\n The United States led a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 that brought self-rule to Kosovo from Serbia after a war that left 13,000 dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Serbian court Friday jailed a Kosovo citizen for a war crime during its independence struggle as tensions spiral between the Balkan neighbours. The Belgrade court said Nezir Mehmetaj was convicted for his role in the abduction of a Roma man during the war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in Kosovo in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-139162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n