Kurti's courts continue making unlawful rulings against Serbs - Serbian gov't office

BELGRADE - The Serbian government Office for Kosovo-Metohija said on Thursday the political courts of Pristina's PM Albin Kurti continued to make unlawful, draconic and political rulings against Serbs.

The rulings are not based on evidence, credible eyewitness accounts, law or justice, but exclusively on ethnic grounds, with the aim of retaliation against the Serbs, it said in a statement, reiterating a call to international missions in the province to ensure respect for the Serbs' fundamental rights pursuant to their mandate and prevent any kind of physical and institutional persecution of the Serb population.

The latest in a series of such unfounded rulings is the one made in the trial of Milos Pleskovic from Prizren, Kosovo-Metohija, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Thursday for an alleged war crime even though "no credible witness has implicated him in the commission of the crime," it said.

Pleskovic, who was 19 at the time of the alleged crime, has travelled to Prizren without obstructions on several occasions afterwards, only to be identified by purported witnesses as the alleged perpetrator as many as 24 years later, the Office also said.

"His family, like thousands of other Serbs, was forcibly expelled from its Prizren home in 1999, when the city was completely ethnically cleansed of the Serbs, and today's ruling is a message to all of them that they must not return to their ancestral homes and should not even think about doing so as they will be arrested and convicted for the most serious crimes without any concrete evidence whatsoever," the Office said.