Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti said he met with European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas during his visit to New York, where they discussed the Banjska attack, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers verdict and Kosovo’s EU integration process.
According to Kurti, the meeting addressed the third anniversary of the September 2023 attack in Banjska, where Kosovo Police Sergeant Afrim Bunjaku was killed.
Kurti reiterated his call for Milan Radoičić and other members of the group involved in the attack to face justice in Kosovo.
The Kosovo government has repeatedly accused Radoičić, a Kosovo Serb businessman and political figure, of being responsible for organizing the armed group involved in the Banjska attack. Serbia has not extradited him to Kosovo, and the case remains a major point of dispute between Prishtina and Belgrade.
Kurti also said he raised the first-instance judgment of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague. He expressed what he described as deep concern over the court’s approach, characterizing the institution as “mono-ethnic” and describing the convictions and sentences handed down against former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders as wrong and unjust.
The Specialist Chambers has rejected the characterization of its proceedings as based on ethnicity, while the defendants have the right to appeal the first-instance judgment. Kurti said Kosovo would work toward what he described as correcting the judgment through the appeals process.
The Kosovo prime minister also called on the EU to actively support the consideration of Kosovo’s application for EU membership, submitted on December 15, 2022, and to support Kosovo’s efforts to obtain candidate-country status.
