A Serbian court Friday jailed a Kosovo citizen for a war crime during its independence struggle as tensions spiral between the Balkan neighbours.
The Belgrade court said Nezir Mehmetaj was convicted for his role in the abduction of a Roma man during the war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in Kosovo in the late 1990s.
Mehmetaj was jailed for six years by the Higher Court of Belgrade.
Serbia and Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority, have been at loggerheads since the end of a war in the late 1990s between Belgrade's forces and ethnic Albanian separatists in what was then a province of Serbia.
Serbia has never recognised Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence.
Tensions are high between the two countries after Pristina blamed Serbia for an explosion targeting a strategic canal in northern Kosovo last weekend, with Prime Minister Albin Kurti calling the blast a "terrorist attack".
Serbia has rejected the accusations.
War crimes cases against Kosovar Albanians in Serbian courts are rare.
Mehmetaj was arrested by Serbian police in January 2020 at the Merdare crossing between Kosovo and Serbia.
Since then, he has been held in Belgrade, with the time spent in custody counted toward his sentence.
"We will certainly appeal this verdict," Mehmetaj's lawyer Milic Konstantinovic told AFP.
"He was convicted on only one count of the indictment, which is based solely on the testimony of a protected witness," Konstantinovic added.
The United States led a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 that brought self-rule to Kosovo from Serbia after a war that left 13,000 dead.