Annamária Markovics, MTI correspondent, reports: The Serbian police arrested three armed members of the special unit of the Kosovo police on Wednesday in southern Serbia, the Serbian Ministry of the Interior announced.
According to the announcement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Pristina, however, the Kosovo policemen were not captured in Serbian, but in Kosovo territory, that is, it was not the Kosovo policemen who penetrated into the territory of Serbia, but the Serbian policemen into the territory of Kosovo.
According to information from the Serbian Ministry of the Interior, the three Kosovo Albanian police officers were hiding in Serbia in full gear, “armed to the chin”, equipped with maps and GPS equipment. “Thanks to the quick and effective action of the police, we successfully prevented the Kosovo police from carrying out an operation in the territory of Central Serbia that can be considered a terrorist act in all its parameters with the aim of further destabilizing the situation and increasing the tension directed against Serbia ” – reads the announcement.
According to the statement of the Ministry of Interior of Kosovo, however, the three policemen were kidnapped by Serbian forces, as they were in the territory of Kosovo and checked a road used by Serbian criminal gangs for smuggling. Riots broke out in Kosovo at the end of May, when after the local elections in April, which were boycotted by the local Serbs, the Albanian mayors, who were elected with only a 3.5 percent turnout, wanted to take office in the majority-Serb-inhabited area. The local Serbs attacked the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR), in response to which the alliance decided to reinforce KFOR with an additional 700 personnel.
On Tuesday, the Kosovo police arrested a Serbian man who was suspected of being one of the organizers of the attacks against KFOR. Belgrade immediately reacted to the accusation and announced that the man was innocent. Kosovo Serbs took to the streets again in protest. Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, but Belgrade has refused to recognize this ever since and continues to consider the predominantly Albanian territory as its southern province. Dialogue between the two parties aimed at normalizing relations began in 2013, but no significant progress was made.
(Source: MTI)
