In the northern Kosovo town of North Mitrovica, at the site of Oliver Ivanovic’s assassination, family members, friends and political allies marked the eighth anniversary of his death by lighting candles on Friday.

Four people have been convicted of involvement in his death but those who ordered and carried out the murder have never been held accountable.

Marko Jaksic, from Ivanovic’s party and a councillor in the North Mitrovica Assembly, said that he would have liked to see more people gathered at the site of the murder on the anniversary, as that would have meant that “the city has changed”.

“From the very beginning until today, almost the same people have been gathering at this very spot. I neither expected fewer nor more people than those who are here today,” KoSSev reported him as saying.

The commemoration in North Mitrovica was also attended by opposition politicians and activists from Serbia. Ivanovic’s party was in opposition to the main, Belgrade-backed Kosovo Serb party, Srpska Lista. Before his death, Ivanovic has expressed fears that he might be targeted.

In Belgrade, a commemoration service was held in the city’s St Sava church, attended by the Parliament Speaker, Ana Brnabic, the Foreign Minister, Marko Djuric, and the head of the Serbian government’s office for Kosovo, Petar Petkovic.

After the commemoration in Belgrade, Brnabic accused the authorities in Prishtina of sabotaging the investigation into Ivanovic’s murder, which she claimed was why there is no information on the organisers and executors of the assassination.

“It has been eight years since the brutal murder of Oliver Ivanovic, eight years without justice, eight years without information about who organised, ordered, and carried out this murder, and eight years in which Pristina has been obstructing the pursuit of justice or any meaningful and substantive investigation,” Brnabic said, Insajder reported.

In June 2024, in Kosovo, Pristina’s Basic Court found four Serbs, Nedeljko Spasojevic, Marko Rosic, Zarko Jovanovic and Dragisa Markovic, guilty of involvement in the killing.

That verdict came three years after the start of a problematic trial in which the two men suspected of leading the group that organised the murder, the former deputy leader of the Belgrade-backed Srpska Lista, Milan Radoicic, and the businessman Zvonko Veselinovic, were mentioned in the indictment but never charged.

Both denied involvement.