The Kosovo Police Inspectorate on Monday said it was investigating an incident in Serb-dominated North Mitrovica on Friday allegedly involving a police officer and a Serb high-school pupil.

Kosovo Serb civil society groups, Serbian government ministers and the EU’s rule-of-law mission in Kosovo condemned the incident involving a group of pupils celebrating the end of the school year on May 23.

A video showed a student being stopped by a police patrol and grabbed by the neck by an officer.

“The Police Inspectorate has started collecting and verifying information regarding this incident. Further actions will be undertaken in conformity with … the findings,” the Police Inspectorate told BIRN on Monday.

The Police Inspectorate is tasked with the prevention, detection, documentation and investigation of criminal offences committed by Kosovo Police employees, regardless of rank and position, on duty or off duty.

On Sunday, the head of Kosovo Police, KP, Gazmend Hoxha denied Serbian claims that the policeman injured the young Serb’s neck.

But Hoxha said the policeman had been transferred to South Mitrovica after the incident “to avoid any contact or provocation that could happen in the next days,” he told a press conference.

He said that a red mark on the student’s neck was not blood, but a colour that he and other students had applied to their necks.

“The student has been interviewed in the presence of his father. The is no sign of bleeding [on the neck],” Hoxha added.

Kosovo’s Interior Minister, Xhelal Svecla, claimed the officer intervened to de-escalate tensions between the student and an ethnic Albanian.

But five North Mitrovica-based civil society organisations on Friday called for disciplinary proceedings against the officer. “We demand the immediate initiation of disciplinary proceedings against the officer in question for excessive use of force, as well as his suspension pending the outcome of the investigation,” the NGOs said.

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic called the incident a “brutal attack”. The ministry said on Saturday that it had issued an arrest warrant for the police officer, named as Dylot Brahimi.

“Brahimi will be arrested when he is available to the Serbian police from today onwards, without statute of limitations whenever possible,” a press release quoted Dacic as saying.

Serbia’s Justice Ministry also condemned what it called a “shameful and unprovoked attack.

“Instead of being safe among his peers during the end of high-school celebrations, a Serbian pupil was physically attacked, clamped by the neck and mistreated by uniformed people – only because he is a Serb,” Justice Minister Nenad Vujic said in a press release.

Giovanni Pietro Barbano, head of the EU’s rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, on Friday said he was “deeply shocked” and condemned “the excessive use of force displayed today by a member of the KP [Kosovo Police] against a young boy in North Mitrovica.

“I have expressed my concerns to the KP leadership and I am confident that those responsible for this unacceptable act will be held accountable in accordance with the rule of law,” Barbano said.