Two officials from Vetevendosje, Kosovo’s ruling party, were sentenced on Tuesday for inciting hate towards a judge and prosecutor who released a Kosovo Serb suspected of an attack on election offices in North Mitrovica.
Ardita Zeqiri
Kosovo’s Palace of Justice in Pristina. Photo: BIRN
The Basic Court of Pristina sentenced Kosovo government spokesperson Arlind Manxhuka and ruling party MP Egzon Azemi to one year and six months in prison each on Tuesday, following a retrial in a case involving charges of inciting division and hate.
The case dates from a 2023 indictment, when prosecutors charged Manxhuka and Azemi with inciting division and hate toward a judge and a prosecutor in Pristina.
Tuesday’s ruling comes after a November 2025 decision from the Court of Appeals to overturn an earlier judgment from March of that year. In the March decision, Manxhuka had been acquitted, while Azemi was sentenced to six months in prison. Two other men, Qerim Elshani and Edi Zenelaj, were each sentenced to six months in prison for directing violent comments and threats towards the judge and prosecutor beneath Manxhuka and Azemi’s Facebook posts.
The prosecution file notes that both Manxhuka and Azemi intentionally used social media to publicly incite hatred and intolerance toward judicial officials.
According to the indictment, the two officials used their Facebook accounts on December 28, 2022, to spread messages targeting Judge Mentor Bajraktari and Special Prosecutor Afrim Shefkiu. The social media posts were a response to a decision to change the detention measure for Dejan Pantic, a former Kosovo Serb police officer arrested on suspicion of organising a terrorist attack against Central Election Commission offices in north Mitrovica.
Prosecutors said that Manxhuka shared posts describing the court’s decision as “an act of betrayal” and questioned the court’s allegiance, while Azemi posted messages accompanied by language and imagery interpreted as endorsing violence against “traitors”.
Following the verdict, Manxhuka stated that criminal groups and Serbian influence in northern Kosovo had been dismantled.
“What was not only left undone, but even encouraged for over 20 years, was confronted and dismantled in just one mandate. We were aware that many interests would be disrupted,” Manxhuka wrote on Facebook.
Azemi, meanwhile, rejected the ruling, claiming that the convictions were issued without evidence and were politically motivated.
“Those who release bomb-throwing Serbian terrorists now want to punish us, Albanian activists, just because we reacted to this scandal,” Azemi said.
The verdict can be appealed.
