The Prishtina Basic Court on Monday found Dragan Denic and Ivica Rajkovic guilty in absentia of raping an ethnic Albanian woman during the Kosovo war and sentenced them to 15 years in prison each.

“As members of the police forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia during the war in Kosovo, in violation of the rules of international humanitarian law …[and] in complicity with other members of the police forces, [they] committed the sexual abuse of an Albanian woman, around May 23-25,1999,” judge Rrahman Beqiri said.

The verdict can be appealed.

According to the indictment, as well as raping the woman, Denic and Rajkovic, together with other members of Serbian police forces, participated in expelling Kosovo Albanian civilians, looting their property and committing physical and psychological violence against them, as well as other inhumane acts.

This is the third war crimes verdict issued in absentia in Kosovo.

In the first, the Prishtina Basic Court in December 2024 sentenced former Serbian fighter Cedomir Aksic to 15 years’ imprisonment for involvement in the mistreatment, expulsions and murders of Kosovo Albanians in Shtime/Stimlje municipality.

The second verdict came earlier this month, when the Basic Court sentenced a former member of Serbia’s Security Service, Slavisa Filic, to 15 years in prison in absentia over the case of a Kosovo doctor, Hafir Shala, who went missing on April 10, 1998, on the day he was arrested by Serbian police. He was never seen again.

The Humanitarian Law Centre Kosovo says the Kosovo Special Prosecutor’s Office filed 13 indictments in 2024 for war crimes, six of them in absentia for 11 suspects, all allegedly members of Serbian military or police forces.

Seven indictments were issued against 13 former members of Serbian forces who had already been arrested. In 2023, eight indictments were filed in absentia against 61 accused.