Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti said he met with European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas at the United Nations headquarters in New York, where they discussed the Banjska attack, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers judgment and Kosovo’s European integration.
Kurti said he asked for EU support in pressing Serbia to ensure that Milan Radoičić and other members of the armed group accused of responsibility for the September 2023 Banjska attack face justice in Kosovo.
September 24 will mark three years since the attack in northern Kosovo, in which Kosovo Police Sergeant Afrim Bunjaku was killed.
Kurti also said he expressed concern over the first-instance verdict and sentences handed down by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers against former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders.
“The trial has not ended, and the Republic of Kosovo will engage to ensure that this process and verdict are corrected at the appeals stage,” Kurti said.
He described the KLA’s war as a response to what he characterized as repression, killings, massacres and expulsions carried out by Serbian forces, adding that many crimes committed during the war have yet to be punished.
According to Kurti, the meeting also addressed the situation of Albanians in Serbia’s Preševo Valley. He said the Albanian community there faces what he described as significant underrepresentation in state institutions and “administrative ethnic cleansing” through the removal of residential addresses.
Kurti also reiterated Kosovo’s commitment to European and Euro-Atlantic integration and called for EU support for Kosovo to obtain candidate-country status.
The first-instance judgment of the Specialist Chambers remains subject to appeal, meaning the proceedings have not yet reached a final conclusion.
