Serbian Ministry Again Defends Privacy of Wanted War Criminal

 Belgrade Higher Court. Photo: BIRN.

The Serbian Interior Ministry has refused to reveal if there is an international arrest warrant for former Serbian Army officer Rajko Kozlina, who never appeared to serve his 15-year sentence for war crimes in Kosovo.

The First Basic Court in Belgrade issued a warrant for Kozlina’s arrest in June this year.

In a written response to BIRN, the ministry argued that giving out the information would “violate the right to privacy of the person”, and claimed that there is also no public interest in providing it.

In December 2019, Belgrade Appeals Court found Kozlina, a former Yugoslav Army soldier, guilty of leading his unit into the Kosovo village of Trnje/Terrne on March 25, 1999, shooting two civilians, who both survived, and ordering his soldiers to fire on other civilians in the village, causing the deaths of 15 people.

Among the victims were elderly people and a four-year-old boy. Many of their bodies are still missing.

The Supreme Court of Cassation confirmed the ruling in June this year, but Kozlina never appeared to serve his sentence.

Kozlina was officially employed with the Serbian Army until March 16, 2020, when he lost the rank of non-commissioned officer and was left without the right to a pension.

Sources within the Serbian administration told BIRN that Kozlina fled the country following the verdict. Kozlina received a notification of the verdict last year, Radio Free Europe reported.

This is the second time that the Interior Ministry has refused to provide any information about Kozlina’s case to BIRN. In October, the ministry also rejected BIRN’s freedom of information request asking whether he used an official border crossing to flee the country.

The Interior Ministry cited the same reasons, privacy issues and an alleged lack of public interest.

Commenting on ministry’s first response, Rodoljub Sabic, a Belgrade-based lawyer and Serbia’s former Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, said the refusal left room for speculation that the police might have been aware of the fact that Kozlina had fled.

The refusal to supply the information “raises suspicion that the wanted person did cross the border after all and that information is being hidden about something which was not supposed to happen and for which someone should bear the responsibility”, Sabic said.

The Serbian Interior Ministry and Defence Ministry often cite privacy concerns or confidentiality in order not to disclose information about alleged war criminals to journalists and researchers.

Most of the case files and evidence from war crime trials in Serbia are also not easily accessible to journalists, researchers and the general public.

During his trial, Kozlina often failed to appear for hearings. The trial was postponed on numerous occasions due to the defendants’ alleged illnesses.

In March last year, Belgrade Higher Court judge Mirjana Ilic expressed suspicion that the defendants were deliberately avoiding the hearings by claiming to have health problems.

Both Kozlina and Pavle Gavrilovic, another co-defendant, were submitting medical reports, issued by Serbian Army hospitals, to support their claims. Kozlina was still a serving soldier with the Serbian Army at the time of the trial.

The Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre NGO accused the hospitals on several occasions of enabling Gavrilovic and Kozlina to avoid hearings on health grounds. The Military Medical Academy, the Serbian Army’s main hospital, denied the accusations.