The Prishtina Basic Court on Tuesday sentenced Srdjan Lazovic, a former reservist member of the Yugoslav Army, to 12 years and six months in prison for war crimes against civilians in Panorc, a village in Kosovo’s central municipality of Malisheve/Malisevo, during the 1998-99 war.

He will also have to pay court expenses of 200 euros and another 100 euros into a victims’ fund.

Lazovic has been in detention since June 2024, time which will be deducted from his sentence. He pleaded not guilty and the first-instance verdict can be appealed.

The court confirmed the indictment, which said that Lazovic, in collaboration with other members of Serbia’s police and military, on September 3-5, 1999 violated international law by illegally arresting and physically and psychologically torturing around 500 people who were not involved in the war, of mass deportation of Albanians, and of destruction of property and looting.

The indictment said that residents of villages in Malisheve/Malisevo and Kline/Klina who were ordered to leave their homes were heading toward Panorc when they reached a police checkpoint and were stopped. The men were then separated from the women and children and sent to a school.

At the school, the men were tortured and beaten by Serbian forces, according to the indictment. They were kept in the school, where Lazovic as a reservist was also present, for more than 30 hours illegally without food, water, or other needs.

“Initially they separated the men and women, with the latter ordered to leave, while around 500 men were arrested and headed toward the village school, where they were subjected to beating and torture,” it read.

The indictment said a compact disc with a video recording from the scene showed “Srdjan Lazovic together with two uniformed members of Serbian police forces … directing AK-47s at Albanian civilian men who were kneeling with their hands behind their heads”.

It added that when these photographs were presented to Lazovic in an interview, he denied knowing the two men in uniform and did not recognise himself in the images.

The indictment also included a statement that Lazovic had given on November 7, 2024 in which he said that “he was not part of any police or military force until April 1999, when he joined the Yugoslav Army reserve forces.

“Lazovic admitted that during this period he was armed with a semi-automatic weapon and was wearing a uniform with a Yugoslav Army emblem but said he stayed in Zerovnice [in the north of Kosovo] and was not part of any fighting operation,” the indictment read.

According to the indictment, Lazovic denied even knowing where Panorc is and said he was “informed about this event only after the arrest by Kosovo Police”.