Kosovo’s Supreme Court has upheld the second-instance verdict sentencing former policeman Zoran Vukotic to 13 years in prison for committing rape and participating in the expulsions of ethnic Albanian civilians from the town of Vushtrri/Vucitrn during the war in May 1999.
The Supreme Court’s decision said that he was correctly convicted of “war crimes against the civilian population,” which he committed with other members of a Serbian police reservist unit and “other armed persons.”
Vukotic was sentenced to 10 years in prison by Pristina Basic Court in July 2021 and was given the same jail term after a retrial in November 2022.
In February 2023, the Court of Appeals sentenced him to an additional three years’ imprisonment—a total of 13 years.
He was convicted of illegally detaining, beating, and torturing ethnic Albanian inmates at the Smerkonica prison in the Mitrovica region from May to early June 1999.
Read more here.
