A Kosovo Serb was freed of war crimes charges by the Appeals Court in Pristina which ruled that there was insufficient evidene to try him, the Serbian state TV (RTS) reported on Monday.

Kosovo‘s Special Prosecution indicted Milorad Zajic from the town of Klina for the alleged murder of three elderly, paralyzed members of the Kosovo Albanian family Marmulaku as a soldier in the Yugoslav Army (VJ) in the village of Disevic outside Klina. This was the first trial of a Kosovo Serb by the local judiciary after the mandate of the EULEX mission expired.  

“The Appeals Court ruled to uphold a lower court decision that the testimony of one witness who claimed to have seen Zajic armed and in uniformed at the site of the murder could not be used as the basis for the indictment,” lawyer Dejan Vasic said.  

Zajic was arrested on March 19, 2018 when he tried to report a burglary and was ordered into house arrest in March this year when the lower court freed him of the war crimes charges.