Serbian Political Leader In Northern Kosovo Shot Dead
RFE/RL's Balkan Service
6-7 minutes
MITROVICA, Kosovo -- Oliver Ivanovic, an ethnic Serb political leader in northern Kosovo, has been shot dead in front of his office in the Serb-dominated northern part of the divided city of Mitrovica.
Ivanovic's lawyer, Nebojsa Vlajic, told RFE/RL that Ivanovic was shot at 8:15 a.m. on January 16, and that doctors at a hospital in Mitrovica confirmed his death at 9:30 a.m.
Kosovo's government denounced the killing as an attack on the rule of law. Serbian delegates walked out of EU-facilitated talks with Kosovar authorities in Brussels, calling it an attempt to sow "chaos" in Serbia.
Media reports in Serbia described the killing as a drive-by shooting carried out by more than one assailant while Ivanovic was entering his office on Sutjeska Street in northern Mitrovica.
Ivanovic sustained at least five gunshot wounds to his upper torso, Vlajic quoted doctors as saying.
Ksenija Bozovic, the deputy president of Ivanovic's SDP (Freedom, Democracy, Justice) Civic Initiative party, told RFE/RL that police found three bullet casings on the ground outside of Ivanovic's office.
Kosovo police said they believe a burned out Opel Astra car found later on another Mitrovica street was used by the perpetrators.
In Pristina, Kosovar President Hashim Thaci strongly denounced Ivanovic's killing.
A statement issued on Thaci's Facebook page called on law enforcement authorities to "throw light as soon as possible on the circumstances of the death so that the perpetrators are brought to justice."
Thaci also urged Kosovar citizens in the north to cooperate with police as their investigation continues.
The government in Pristina said it considered the killing an attack on "the rule of law and efforts to establish the rule of law in the whole of Kosovo territory."
In Brussels, Serbian delegates walked out of talks with Kosovar authorities that had just gotten under way -- the latest attempt to improve severely strained relations between Serbia and Kosovo.
The leader of Belgrade's delegation, Marko Djuric, said he and other Serbian delegates were returning to Belgrade because of "Ivanovic's murder."
Djuric, who heads of the Serbian government's Office for Kosovo and Metohija, said the killing was "an attempt to push the Serbian people into chaos, to push Serbia into chaos."
He said that "whoever is behind this attack…whether they are Serb, Albanian, or any other criminals, they must be punished."
EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini spoke to the presidents of both Serbia and Kosovo by telephone after the killing of Ivanovic.
A statement from Mogherini's office said she urged all sides "to show clam and restraint" and to allow the rule of law to take its course.
Mogherini also said the EU's Rule of Law mission in Kosovo (EULEX) would support the investigation by Kosovar authorities "in accordance with its mandate."
The EU-facilitated talks in Brussels -- which had last taken place in March 2017 -- were scheduled to continue through January 18 and were aimed pushing forward with the normalization of relations between Pristina and Belgrade.
Issues on the agenda of the Brussels talks included contentious issues surrounding a proposal for the creation of an Association of Serb Majority Municipalities in Kosovo.
Although Kosovo declared independence in 2008, Belgrade still claims the former Serbian province as part of its territory.
The normalization of ties between Pristina and Belgrade is also a key issue tied to the EU-membership ambitions of both Serbia and Kosovo.
In Belgrade, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic scheduled an emergency meeting of the National Security Council on January 16 to discuss the implications of the killing.
Kosovar Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said in a Facebook statement that "exploiting this tragic act for daily political goals, even to block processes aiming at normalizing ties between two countries, is against the logic and spirit of cooperation."
"Kosovo remains committed to create a safe environment for all its citizens and is powerfully set in its Euro-Atlantic path," Haradinaj said.
He also said Pristina would "in no situation accept the logic of calculating criminal acts for political purposes by anyone."
Ivanovic, considered a moderate opposition politician, was a controversial political figure in both Serbia and Kosovo.
Judges from the EULEX mission in Kosovo in January 2016 found Ivanovic guilty of committing war crimes against ethnic Albanians during Kosovo's 1998-99 war and sentenced him to nine years in prison.
But that verdict was annulled by the Appeals Court in Pristina in February 2017, and a retrial was under way at the time of Ivanovic's death.
Ivanovic's political career began in June 1999 during the final days of the Kosovo war when he was named as the head of the Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohija, a body set up in 1999 to represent ethnic Serbs in Kosovo.
More recently, he was the president of the SDP Civic Initiative that ran candidates in local elections in Kosovo in 2017.
Ivanovic served as a member of Serbia's government from 2008 to 2012, despite Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence, as Belgrade's state secretary of the Ministry for Kosovo and Metohija.
He was also a leader in Kosovo of Serbia's Social Democratic Party until 2009 when he became president of the SDP Civic Initiative.
Before the 1998-99 war, Ivanovic was a manager at the Trepca mine complex in Mitrovica.
Belgrade continues to claims ownership of the Trepca mines, which once employed 23,000 people and accounted for 70 percent of Kosovo's gross domestic product.
But the de facto partition of Mitrovica between Serbs and ethnic Albanians has kept most of Trepca's facilities closed since 1999.
