The members of Kosovo special police ROSU unit arrested three Serbs in northern Kosovo early on Friday morning allegedly linked to the January's assassination of a Kosovo Serb leader Oliver Ivanovic, and one for resisting the police, media reported.

The KosSev website journalist Milica Andric told N1 that one of the arrested was a policeman suspended for allegedly hiding evidence in the Ivanovic’s murder case.

After Ivanovic’s murder in January this year, the Mitrovica Basic Court Prosecutor said that a video from the crime scene showed a policeman taking a bullet casing and put it in his pocket.

Three people were apprehended in connection with an investigation into Ivanovic’s assassination, while one man had to be detained for confronting police officers, said Kosovo police spokesman Daut Hoxha on Friday.

Meanwhile, Igor Simic, a senior official of the Serb List, a Serb minority political party in Kosovo, said the arrests linked to Ivanovic’s murder were “a brutal lie invented to cover up for the intimidation of people.”

“They were all apprehended with use of force, threats, and intimidation,” Simic said.

The mayor of northern Mitrovica, a part of the divided town populated by the majority of Serbs, Goran Rakic, said it was yet another kind of pressure on the Serbs and that there would have been a conflict if ROSU hadn’t withdrawn its men.

On Thursday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said he had information on Kosovo troops’ movement toward the north of the country, but the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) prevented them.

We have information that KFOR was prepared to stop someone’s madness and we are thankful to them if that is true, Vucic had said on the margins of his meeting with Kosovo Serbs.

KFOR later denied any intervention on their part, as well as any troops movements. 

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