A EULEX team of judges at the Kosovska Mitrovica court of first instance has requested that Oliver Ivanovic’s lawyers provide proof of being registered with the Kosovo Bar Association.
The request was part of a letter the judges sent to lawyer Toma Fila on March 18 in response to his request to visit Ivanovic based on authority granted by Milroslav Ivanovic to represent him before the court in Kosovska Mitrovica.
The court invoked article 40 of Kosovo’s law on practice of law and requested that Fila provide proof that he and Mihajlo Bakrac were registered with the Kosovo Bar Association before it could grant Fila’s request. It further stated that Fila’s statement concerning the issue would be considered good enough evidence, according to the letter, whose copy was published by the daily newspaper Politika from Belgrade.
According to Politika, Fila sent another letter on March 19 informing the court that he and Bakrac were members of the Serbian Bar Association and the association of lawyers who appear before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
He also stated in the letter that lawyers who are members of the Kosovo Bar Association appear before Serbian courts on all levels and once again asked that he be allowed to visit Ivanovic.
Leader of the Citizens’ Initiative ‘Freedom, Democracy, Justice’ Oliver Ivanovic has been in detention since January 27. He was arrested on suspicion of involvement in an alleged war crime in 1999 and post-war incidents in 2000, including an aggravated murder.
Despite guarantees from the Serbian government, Ivanovic was not released pending his trial, but after a hunger strike in Pristina, where he felt unsafe being surrounded by ethnic Albanians, he was transferred to a detention facility in Kosovska Mitrovica on March 12.
