UN top official in Kosovo Zahir Tanin told the Security Council he was “alarmed” that the two UN staff members arrested in Kosovo on 28 may, “were apparently subjected to excessive force and mistreatment upon their arrest by police causing injuries and requiring hospitalization.”
Two members of the UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), a Russian national Mikhail Krasnoshchekov and local Serb Dejan Dimovic, were arrested by the Kosovo special police force during an operation in Zubin Potok, a majority Serb populated municipality in the north of Kosovo, aimed at apprehending members of the Kosovo police for alleged organized crime involvement.
The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Kosovo and head of UNMIK Zahir Tanin said their arrest and injuries they sustained “is a matter which will form an essential component of the enquiry we have initiated.”
The Special Representative Tanin said that although there has been a clear progress over the last twenty years, “the situation in Kosovo, and between Belgrade and Pristina, is again at a fragile moment.”
According to Tanin, there were productive engagement between Belgrade and Pristina since late 2018. And while the removal of 100% tariff on Serbian and Bosnian goods is the Belgrade’s minimum condition for resuming the negotiations, Pristina has set its own, albeit not always unified conditions.
Tanin said “multiple inconsistent public signals have hampered all efforts to ensure the full engagement of both parties in a single or definitive process” and called on the leaders on both sides act responsibility and do not escalate an already “complex situation.”
