Kosovo court sentences three Serbs to life, 30 years for Banjska attack

The Basic Court in Pristina handed down some of Kosovo’s harshest sentences in years on April 24, convicting three Kosovo Serbs over the Banjska attack and framing the case as a test of whether the state can enforce accountability in a politically explosive assault on its sovereignty. Blagoje Spasojevic, 33, and Vladimir Tolic, 40, received life imprisonment, while Dusan Maksimovic, 29, was sentenced to 30 years for terrorism and serious acts against Kosovo’s constitutional order and security.

The court said the men took part in a well-organized armed operation that crossed illegally from Serbia into northern Kosovo with dozens of vehicles, including some armored ones, carrying weapons, military camouflage and other equipment. Prosecutors said the group had trained days earlier at the Pasuljanske Livade military training ground in central Serbia before the assault in Banjska village near the Serbian border in the early hours of September 24, 2023. Around 30 ethnic Serb gunmen ambushed a Kosovo police patrol, killing Kosovo Albanian police sergeant Afrim Bunjaku, 50, and wounding officer Clirim Shaqiri. Three gunmen were killed in the gunbattle.

The judge described the attack as part of a plan to detach Serb-majority municipalities in northern Kosovo and join them to Serbia, a charge that cuts to the heart of the long-running dispute over Kosovo’s authority in its north. The indictment named 44 individuals and one legal entity, with 43 people charged in total, but only the three men in custody were tried. Among those still at large is the alleged group leader Milan Radoicic, a Kosovo Serb politician and businessman linked to Serbia’s ruling circles and sanctioned by the United States and Britain. He has not been tried despite repeated pressure from Western officials.

The ruling lands against a backdrop of strained Kosovo-Serbia relations that remain locked around Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence and the failure of U.S.- and EU-backed talks between the two sides. Kosovo acting president Albulena Haxhiu said the verdict showed the attack on the police and constitutional order would not go unpunished, while Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla called it a step toward justice for Bunjaku’s family and for Kosovo’s citizens. The Serb List, the main Kosovo Serb party backed by Belgrade, rejected the decision, saying the defendants were convicted without valid evidence and without individual responsibility being established.

The three defendants have 30 days to appeal the first-instance verdict, setting up another round of legal and political confrontation over one of the most dangerous episodes in the postwar Balkans.