A significant difference in the resolution of cases has appeared between the departments of serious crimes of the basic courts in the country, says the report "Challenges in the prosecution and trial of serious crimes", published on Wednesday by the Kosovo Institute for Justice.

This, based on monitoring the handling of cases in basic courts in 2021.

According to the IKD, during 2021 the Department of Serious Crimes in the Court in Pristina was the busiest with cases, followed by the one in Mitrovica.

The least busy court was that of Gjakova.

However, in terms of the number of resolved cases and the number of judges engaged, the DKR in Gjakovë has emerged as the department with the highest efficiency.

On average, a judge resolved 7.75 cases per month.

This court is followed by the one in Pristina with 6.15 cases resolved by a judge per month.

Mitrovica follows with 5.22, Ferizaj with 4.42, Peja with 4.4 and Prizren with 4.02.

The weakest is Gjilani with 3.61 cases resolved per month per court.

"In this way, we see that there is a significant difference between the courts in terms of the overall average resolution of cases.

There is no information from the KJC or the courts as to why such a thing happens.

For this reason, we have recommended that this issue be handled by the KJC, to determine the causes that bring this difference", said the representatives of the IKD in a press conference on Wednesday.

During 2021, the number of outstanding cases has increased by 81 cases, according to the report.

In 2021, there were more outstanding cases than a year earlier.

Representatives of IKD have said that the lack of punishment that prohibits the officials from exercising their functions has been noticed.

"IKD has come across numerous cases when it was possible to apply additional penalties, but they were not pronounced by the court.

The lack of additional penalty of banning the exercise of functions in the public administration or in the public service is especially noticeable", said Medina Kadriu, researcher at IKD.

As for the cases of murders, the executive director of the IKD, Ehat Miftaraj, said that with the return of the cases for retrial, in addition to the restriction of human rights and freedoms, the family members are experiencing in front of the court several times what happened to them. In family.

"In the cases of murder, we have seen that a large number of these cases, either due to negligence, or due to the lack of courage of the judges, the cases are returned for retrial.

From our monitoring, these cases are considered extremely sensitive because it is a very bad feeling that a family member who has lost his mother, father, brother, sister or close family member has been left in the middle of the judicial process two or three times", he said. Miftaraj said.