The Basic Pristina Court sentenced six people to a total of 25 years in jail for planning terrorist attacks on the members of the NATO-led KFOR, the property of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) and discotheques in Serb-populated parts of Kosovo, the KoSSev website reported on Wednesday.
The individual sentences vary from ten years to 12 months in prison.
The Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) in its analysis entitled "Western Balkans Foreign Fighters and Homegrown Jihadis: Trends and Implications" reports that since 2012, about 1,070 citizens of Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro travelled to Syria and Iraq, primarily joining the Islamic State, and to a lesser extent al-Qaeda (Jabhat al Nusra, more recently rebranded as Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham - HTS).
State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia Biljana Popovic claims that 400 Kosovo citizens are fighting on the side of terrorists throughout the world, reports Belgrade based daily Politika quoting the Ministry's announcement.
The United States is warning its citizens to "exercise increased caution in Kosovo due to terrorism" and listed some areas Washington thinks are at increased risk.
The State Department warning issued Friday said that "terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in the Balkans region, including Kosovo."
Italy has expelled a Macedonian and an Albanian citizen for their ties with radical Islam, the Macedonian media reported on Thursday.
According to this, they were found to have been in contact with Muslim radicals arrested in Kosovo for terrorism, whose computers contained "anti-western and anti-Semitic material."
Kosovo’s Ministry of Interior has begun work on drafting a new strategy against terrorism that will cover the period from 2017 to 2022. The work will be led by Deputy Minister Valdet Hoxha who also exercises the post of National Anti-Terrorism Coordinator. Hoxha thanked all relevant local and international institutions for their contribution in implementation of the last anti-terrorism strategy and urged the members of the new working group to prepare a practical, effective and efficient document.
Analysts say the US announcement of sending an additional 130 troops to Kosovo to support KFOR and NATO is a message to warmongering politicians in the region.
The troops in question are members of US special units of the Tupelo-based 1st Battalion, "highly trained for emergency response," the daily Blic is reporting.
Kosovo police, in cooperation with the Kosovo Intelligence Agency prevented planned terrorist attacks in Kosovo and the region. Target of the attack were footballers, and supporters of Israel during a match in Albania. Miloš Popović from the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy says the objective of the arrested group is transnational because of connections with IS and the target of the attack shows it.