He came from Serbia to Kosovo with malicious intent.
The Serbian official, Igor Popović, made statements aimed at inciting interethnic division. However, his attempt was unsuccessful.
Based on intelligence provided by Kosovo’s intelligence institutions, he was arrested by the Kosovo Police.
He has now been taken into custody, and two phones have been temporarily seized from him.
But what exactly did Popović do — who holds the position of Assistant Director of the so-called Office for Kosovo in the Government of Serbia?
During a speech he gave in the village of Hoqë e Madhe in Rahovec, he engaged in propaganda, distorting facts to incite hatred and interethnic division.
He even labeled the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as terrorists.
“Our brothers suffered because the terrorists of the KLA did not want Serbs in these areas, and with their execution, they aimed to frighten the rest of the Serb population into leaving this region,” said Popović.
But the truth is that during the late 1990s, after all Albanians were removed from their jobs, following the poisoning of Albanian students and the persecution that followed, the Serbian army — under the orders of former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević — expelled more than 1 million Albanians from Kosovo.
At that time, Milošević’s Minister of Propaganda was the current President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, who instead of apologizing for the crimes committed by the regime he was part of, tries to shift blame onto the victims and continue promoting ethnic division.
Popović continued his dangerous propaganda at unimaginable and delusional levels.
“It also hurts that the terrorists, organizers, and executors of the crime have not been found and punished all these years, even though we see that for a similar crime — the kidnapping of Israeli civilians — the entire Gaza is being destroyed,” he said.
Popović made this degrading comparison, essentially calling for the destruction of the state of Kosovo — despite the fact that Albanians have never in history attacked any part of Serbia, and their only aim was to protect civilians from the army of Slobodan Milošević, which raped over 20,000 women, killed thousands of civilians, and expelled more than 1 million from Kosovo.
These same crimes were committed by that army in other Balkan countries as well, such as in the genocide in Bosnia — recognized as the largest massacre in Europe since World War II.
And while Serbian war criminals continue to roam free and be protected by Popović’s superior — Milošević’s former associate Aleksandar Vučić — Kosovo has voted to establish an investigative tribunal to examine any potential violations committed during the war.
But in his attempt at propaganda, Popović did reveal one truth:
“Despite all the international investigative groups from UNMIK, EULEX, and the Hague Tribunal, there are no convictions or punishments; on the contrary, the KLA continues to be recognized as a liberation organization and freedom fighters.”
Popović thus confirmed that even after extensive investigations — including by international organizations — it has been proven that the KLA did not commit crimes but was instead defending the civilian population and striving for freedom and democracy from a Serbian regime that, in less than a decade, started wars with most of the Balkan states.
