The Prishtina Basic Court in a retrial has cut former Serbian policeman Caslav Jolic’s jail sentence from eight years to five years and six months, according to the verdict announced on Friday.

Jolic was found guilty of involvement in war crimes in the Istog/Istok area in 1998 against Kosovo Albanian civilians.

He was sentenced to eight years by the same court last June. In December, the Court of Appeals ordered a retrial citing “essential violations of criminal procedure provisions”. The court said Jolic should stay in detention pending the retrial, “unless the first-instance court decides otherwise”.

Presiding Judge Ngadhnjim Arrni on Friday said Jolic’s time spent in detention would be deducted from the total length of the sentence.

The indictment against Jolic said that in 1998, a person identified only as Z.M. brought British and Belgian journalists to the site of a Serbian military helicopter crash in the village of Gurrakoc/Durakovac in Istog/Istok.

Five people in Serbian police uniforms, including Jolic, then beat Z.M. up for 20 minutes in front of the journalists for bringing them to the scene. Z.M. fainted as a consequence.

In the second incident listed in the indictment, a person identified as N.F. was drinking coffee in Gurrakoc/Durakovac when five Serbian police officers, including Jolic, dragged him out of the cafe, hitting him on different parts of his body.

In a third incident, on March 15, 1998, Jolic was accused of beating a person with the initials N.C. until several other policemen intervened and stopped him. While mistreating N.C., the prosecution claims Jolic shouted: “You are not in Kosovo but in Serbia. This is Greater Serbia.”

Jolic’s arrest in June 2022 angered Serbia’s government. It said Jolic had visited Kosovo many times over 23 years and “had no problem at all until yesterday [June 3, 2022], when he was arrested under suspicious pretexts and circumstances”.

Jolic pleaded not guilty to the charges and was not present when the retrial verdict was announced on Friday,

The verdict can be appealed.