The Court of Appeals of Kosovo has upheld the six-year prison sentence handed down to Jelena Djukanović for continued espionage, rejecting as unfounded the appeals filed by the Special Prosecution Office and the defense, Rks News reports.
The prosecution had sought a harsher sentence, while the defense had requested an acquittal or the annulment of the judgment and the retrial of the case.
The decision was issued on September 25, 2026, by a panel of the Special Department chaired by Judge Avni Mehmeti, with judges Vaton Durguti and Albina Shabani Rama as members. The ruling upheld the judgment of the Basic Court in Prishtina issued on June 1, 2026.
According to the court’s findings, Djukanović, from 2018 until June 26, 2024, while serving as a national program officer with the OSCE Mission in Kosovo in the Mitrovica region, assisted the intelligence activities of Serbia’s Security Intelligence Agency, known as the BIA.
The court found that she had passed on data, documents and sensitive information obtained in the course of her official duties or through other means. She had also participated in preparing reports and assessments concerning the political and security situation in Kosovo.
According to the judgment, she transmitted the information through regular communications with a person identified by the initials A.V., who had previously been convicted of espionage and was described by the court as a BIA resident agent. The information was subsequently forwarded to the Serbian intelligence service.
A central part of the defense appeal concerned evidence extracted from Djukanović’s phones. Her lawyer, Predrag Miljković, argued that although the devices had been lawfully seized, a separate court order was required to examine their contents.
The Court of Appeals rejected this argument. According to the panel’s interpretation in this case, when devices have been lawfully seized, Article 145 of Kosovo’s Criminal Procedure Code gives the prosecutor the authority to authorize police officers or an expert to analyze the data, without requiring a separate court order for the examination.
The court also rejected the defense’s objections concerning the reliability of the digital evidence, finding that Kosovo Police reports and other evidence admitted into the proceedings supported the conclusions reached by the first-instance court.
Meanwhile, the Special Prosecution Office had argued that a six-year prison sentence did not adequately reflect the seriousness of the offense and the level of danger it posed. In its appeal, the prosecution emphasized that Djukanović had also transmitted information concerning the movements of Kosovo Police Special Units in the north.
Nevertheless, the Court of Appeals found that the first-instance court had properly weighed the aggravating and mitigating circumstances and that the sentence imposed was fair and lawful.
The six-year sentence will include the time she has already spent in pretrial detention since February 28, 2025. The upheld judgment also ordered the confiscation and destruction of two phones, a Samsung Galaxy S8 and Samsung S22.
Note: The persons mentioned in this article are presumed innocent until their guilt has been established by a final court decision.
