The Prishtina Basic Court on Wednesday found Dragan Ristic not guilty of committing war crimes in the Municipality of Gjakova/Djakovica in 1999, during the Kosovo war.

Judge Rrahman Beqiri said the prosecution “has not proven beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant Ristic committed the criminal offence with which he is charged”. He said the only point of the indictment that binds the defendant was related to mistreatment, but that the evidence administered in court had not proven that Ristic “was a member of the Serbian forces, nor has it been proven that he participated in committing these crimes”.

Ristic will be released from detention, though the verdict can be appealed.

On June 27, 2025, the Kosovo Special Prosecution charged Ristic with war crimes against the civilian population. According to the prosecution file, seen by BIRN, on May 7 to 10, 1999, in the city of Gjakova/Djakovica, members of the Serbian military and police forces, which the defendant allegedly had been a part of, divided in groups, committed various war crimes.

The indictment said these Serbian forces violated international human rights laws by murdering, physically and psychologically mistreating civilians, as well as with illegall arrests, burglary and destruction of the assets of ethnic Albanian civilians.

According to the indictment, a few days later, on May 13, Florije, Sabrije and Humajun Dyla, returned to the house they had been forced to flee and found M.D. dead in the house’s hallway with a bloody face and chest wound. The bodies of C.H. and I.L.who  were killed in the yard of the same house, on the same day, May 10, were later found in the mass grave in Batajnica, Serbia, identified via DNA test.

The indictment claimed that on May 10, 1999, at an improvised checkpoint in Gjakova/Djakovica, the victims in this case, Masar and Afrim Caka, were stopped, violently taken out of their vehicle and told to give money. Because they did not have any money, they were beaten with fists, kicks and gun barrels in front of their children and other family members. Other civilians were also mistreated illegally. The indictment said Afrim Caka and Enver Dyla were then arrested and imprisoned together with 300 other ethnic Albanian civilians, kept in improvised prisons in inhumane conditions.

Around 150 people were sent to different prisons in Kosovo. Those that ended up in the Dubrava prison were eventually transferred to prisons in Serbia and were freed only after June 1999 with the assistance of international organisations.