Kosovar authorities have indicted 45 people over their alleged role in an attack last year by ethnic Serbs that left one police officer dead in the village of Banjska, Radio Free Europe (RFE) reported.

Prosecutor Naim Abazi said on September 11 that among those indicted is Milan Radoicic, the fugitive vice president of the Serbian List party accused of leading and organizing the September 2023 attack. He is believed to be in Serbia, said RFE.

The names of the others indicted in the case have not been released.

Abazi said those indicted had different roles within their criminal group “ranging from organizing and directing terrorist activities to financing and money laundering.”

Abazi thanked the United States and the European Union for cooperating with Kosovar authorities, which he said helped bring strong indictments against the 45 individuals, reported RFE.

“Given that the Republic of Kosovo, unfortunately, did not have laboratories available to examine most of this evidence and required international legal assistance from various countries, it can be said that this indictment was filed in an extremely short time frame,” Ehat Miftaraj, executive director of the nongovernmental Kosovo Law Institute, told RFE.

Miftaraj added that details on the indictment are still needed “to know whether the indictment also addresses acts related to state aggression against the Republic of Kosovo, or if it is solely about a well-organized criminal group led by Radoicic that carried out the actions specified in the indictment.”

During the attack, around 30 ethnic Serb gunmen ambushed a police patrol in Banjska, a village near the border with Serbia, killing Sergeant Afrim Bunjaku, an ethnic Albanian Kosovar police officer, reported RFE.

The attackers then made a stand in an Orthodox monastery and exchanged fire with Kosovar forces. Three gunmen were ultimately killed.

Radoicic, who claimed the attack, stepped down from his position in the Serbian List party days after the incident.

The attack came months after talks backed by Washington and Brussels between Kosovo and Serbia collapsed, and relations between the bitter neighbours and rivals have only deteriorated further.