PRISTINA, July 6 /ATA/ – Kosovo’s acting Interior Minister, Xhelal Sveçla, said Sunday that a phone number used to issue a bomb threat against the country’s parliament is linked to a Serbian national associated with convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić.
The bomb threat, which led to the evacuation of lawmakers and a temporary suspension of the constitutive session of the Kosovo Assembly on Saturday, was ultimately deemed false. However, authorities have treated the incident as a serious security breach and a potential hybrid attack on Kosovo’s institutions.
“This attack has been confirmed to have originated in Serbia,” Sveçla wrote in a Facebook post. “The phone number used is registered in Serbia and belongs to the mobile operator MTS. The suspected user of the number is a Serbian citizen, Lazar Živković. Some profiles connected to this number contain images of war criminal Ratko Mladić.”
Mladić, a former Bosnian Serb military commander, was convicted by The Hague Tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed during the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Kosovo authorities are conducting a cyber investigation into the threat, which was delivered by phone in English with a male voice, reportedly bearing an accent “believed to be from a hostile country,” according to prosecutor Zejnullah Gashi, who is handling the case.
Police confirmed late Saturday that the number used is suspected to originate from Serbia. Investigations are ongoing, and officials have not ruled out state-level involvement or coordination.
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