The Prishtina Court has sentenced Nazim Bllaca convicted of the 1999 assassination of politician Ibush Kllokoqi to four and a half years in prison, Balkan Insight reported. The ethnic Albanian was a member of the Kosovo Democratic League and suspected of collaborating with Serbs during the 1998-1999 conflict.
Bllaca said he was part of the Kosovo Information Service (SHIK), an intelligence group that branched from the Kosovo Liberation Army and was affiliated with the political party of Prime Minister Hashim Thaci. Thaci has denied any ties to SHIK. Bllaca has previously confessed to working as a political assassin.
He has been a key witness in murder trials that have convicted seven people, including two others charged with the Kllokoqi murder.
According to Mariola Pasnik, the EU rule-of-law mission’s presiding judge, Bllaca received a short sentence Friday because he has shown remorse and because his testimonies have aided in the conviction of others.
Because he spent a year under house arrest between November 2009 and November 2010, Bllaca will only serve three and a half years in jail.
His defense announced that it would appeal for further reduction of his jail time because he spent time as a witness under close protection from November 2010 until the present.