Prishtina court hands jail sentence for identity theft and blackmail to main administrator and founder of a Telegram group that made available intimate photos and videos of women and girls without their permission.

Prishtina Basic Court on Thursday sentenced a defendant identified only as F.P., the administrator of a group on messaging app Telegram called Albkings – which distributed intimate images and the personal information of women and girls – to one year and nine months in prison and imposed a 5,000-euro fine.

Kujtim Kerveshi, lawyer for one of the victims, told BIRN that F.P., the main administrator and the founder of the group, was found guilty of identity theft and blackmail. The verdict can be appealed.

Seven people were arrested in May 2024 for posting personal information, photos and videos of women and girls without their consent in the Albkings group, which had over 100,000 members.

Some of the arrests came after BIRN reported to the Police and Prishtina Prosecutor’s Office that the phone number of a BIRN journalist had been shared in the Telegram group on May 6 without her authorisation.

The phone number of a woman journalist from Kosovo media outlet Klan Kosova was also shared in the group.

One of the group’s alleged administrators, identified only as E.N., was arrested in April 2024, and is being dealt with in a separate criminal case. A woman with the initials E.S., allegedly the second administrator of the group, was also arrested in April 2024.

The first person detained in relation to the group, an 18-year-old, identified as L.B., was arrested in February 2024 for posting private photographs of an unidentified girl.

By the time of his arrest, around 112,000 members had joined the group, which shared personal data, intimate and “deepfake” videos and photos, mainly of women and girls.

By February 9, 2024, 20,993 photos and 19,516 videos had been uploaded to the group. The group went private soon afterwards. The case prosecutor, Elza Bajrami, said in May 2024 that the group had been closed before but then reopened twice.

Some of the videos that were posted in the Albkings Telegram group were also posted on TikTok, BIRN found in March 2024.

A BIRN analysis of hundreds of videos uploaded by TikTok users in eight Balkan countries showed the platform was being used for the abuse of women and girls based on their appearance and actual or perceived sexual behaviour – so-called ‘slutshaming’.

Over the course of several weeks, BIRN identified 427 videos posted between September 2020 and November 2023 that humiliate girls and women. It is not clear whether any of these videos were cited in the case against F.P. at Prishtina Basic Court.