A material included in the indictment against Fatmir Sheholli on espionage charges has sparked a broad debate in Kosovo, even though its authorship has not yet been made public and remains unclear.
Të lidhura
None found
The document’s contents have been used on social media to raise claims about a possible link between institutions or members of Kosovo’s Muslim community and Serbia’s Security and Information Agency, BIA.
The Islamic Community of Kosovo, BIK, has denied these claims and called on the justice and security institutions to clarify whether the document is genuine and where it originated.
The document, titled “Top Secret 2,” was presented by the Special Prosecutor’s Office as part of the evidence in the indictment against Sheholli. However, it has not been publicly established whether there is evidence that it was drafted by the BIA.
Radio Free Europe asked the Special Prosecutor’s Office whether it had information about the material’s authorship and authenticity, as well as what evidentiary value it attributes to it. By the time this article was published, it had not received a response.
The BIA, which RFE/RL contacted by email, also did not respond.
Fatmir Sheholli is accused by the Prosecutor’s Office of having cooperated with this Serbian agency.
According to the material, a photograph of which, in the Prosecutor’s assessment, was found on Sheholli’s phone, money collected from “Islamic embassies” in Belgrade would be used to build mosques in Kosovo.
The document claims that the aim of this scheme would be to expand the influence of Islam, create divisions among Albanians, encourage emigration and change the way the West perceives Kosovo. According to its contents, these circumstances would serve Serbia’s objective of bringing Kosovo back under its jurisdiction.
The Prosecutor’s Office has not publicly explained what evidence it is using to support the document’s authenticity or authorship.
In the indictment against Sheholli, the BIK is not accused of cooperating with the BIA. Nevertheless, after the indictment was published by various media outlets, such claims began circulating on social media.
The Return Movement, which says it advocates “abandoning the Islamic faith and returning to the faith of our Catholic ancestors,” wrote on Facebook that in “every mosque in Kosovo” there was at least one BIA “spy.”
Arbër Gashi, a member of this movement, confirmed to Radio Free Europe that the post reflected its position.
“It is clear that this is a page that also conducts its own propaganda and opposes the propaganda coming from Islamic circles and circles of the Serbian BIA, which also operate through Albanian imams in Switzerland,” said Gashi, who lives and works in Switzerland.
He did not provide RFE/RL with documented evidence to support these accusations.
The debate on social media has produced opposing views, as well as labeling, insults and accusations among users.
The BIK views this development as the transformation of an issue that should be examined by the justice system into what it describes as an “orchestrated campaign” against the institution and the Muslim community.
“They are poisoning the population, misleading people and, worst of all, conducting a campaign against the people of Kosovo themselves, against their heritage,” Ramadan Shkodra, a BIK official, told RFE/RL.
Shkodra denied that mosques in Kosovo had been built in violation of legal procedures.
“No mosque in Kosovo was built without municipal permits, without the BIK’s permission and without the community’s approval. They were all built through legal channels and with complete documentation. Let them find just one case to the contrary, and we will demolish it down to its foundations,” he said.
According to Shkodra, donations from Kosovo’s friendly countries or from individuals inside the country were made through legal procedures and can be examined by state institutions.
The BIK describes the document as an “old fabrication” and an “ideological pamphlet,” but at the same time calls on the Special Prosecutor’s Office to fully investigate its origin and authenticity.
“To me, it is a piece of rubbish… I am somewhat surprised that our people, supposedly after this document was ‘rediscovered’ on Sheholli’s phone, accept it without any effort as a given, as an established fact, as a valid argument. Yet there is no institution, date or signature there, nor anything behind it,” Shkodra said.
RFE/RL contacted the Kosovo Police and the Kosovo Intelligence Agency to find out whether Kosovo’s institutions had recorded cases in which mosques, Islamic institutions or Islamic activities in Kosovo had been financed by sources in Serbia. The questions also covered the possibility that such financing might have been linked to Serbian state institutions, the BIA or other security structures.
By the time the article was published, these institutions had also not responded to Radio Free Europe.
Kosovo is defined as a secular state.
In the 2024 population census, 93.49 percent of citizens identified themselves as Muslim, 2.31 percent as Orthodox and 1.75 percent as Catholic.
For the Kosovo Law Institute, the way the indictment materials became public is also a matter of concern. The indictment was distributed by several media outlets.
Ehat Miftaraj, executive director of the Kosovo Law Institute, describes the publication of the indictment materials as “irresponsibility” or an “oversight.”
He stresses that everything presented by the Prosecutor’s Office must be considered alleged evidence until it is examined and assessed by the court.
“When such information, which must be proven in court, is published in the public domain, I believe it can have the opposite effect and run counter to Kosovo’s strategic interests,” Miftaraj told RFE/RL.
According to him, the publication of the indictment and the “Top Secret 2” material has resulted in “unsustainable hypotheses,” misreadings of the content and divisions along religious lines.
Miftaraj says that a document with similar content has circulated for years and asks why the institutions did not clarify its origin and authenticity earlier.
“Why should it become public at this stage, when we clearly know that Serbia’s mission is to flood the public with data and information that raise dilemmas and cause divisions among the people of Kosovo? We have seen on social media in recent days how much importance has been attached to it and how this document has been interpreted by different groups for different purposes,” he said.
Similar material was also published in July 2024 by a local television station. At the time, it was claimed that the Serbian intelligence service had drafted a plan some 20 years earlier to finance mosques in Kosovo.
The claim also sparked debate at the time.
Naim Tërnava, head of the BIK, denied the accusations and said that if evidence were presented that any mosque in Kosovo had been built with investments from Serbia, he himself would demolish it.
On August 29 this year, after the debate over the document resurfaced, Tërnava called on the authorities to verify its authenticity.
He said that the publication of materials presented as part of the indictment against Sheholli had created “a situation that requires prudence, responsibility and, above all, a full clarification of the truth.”
Sociologist Fadil Maloku warns that the debate could lead to another problem: moving from suspicion or the possible responsibility of an individual to blaming an entire community.
According to him, clashes between supporters and opponents of the document could cause interfaith polarization, regardless of who is behind the drafting of the material.
“In my sociological judgment, the tendency to involve a religious institution and community, without there yet being any definitive court verdict, among other things has the imperative of damaging, stigmatizing, challenging and weakening this institution, as well as perpetually fostering prejudice against it,” Maloku told RFE/RL.
He believes there is a risk that potential individual responsibility could be perceived as the responsibility of the entire community.
Maloku adds that the feeling of being under attack may strengthen what the sociology of religion calls “defensive solidarity”—the uniting of members of a group around their shared identity when they believe they are under threat.
Mentor Vrajolli, director of the Kosovar Center for Security Studies, calls for the discussion to move away from generalizations about religious communities.
“Everyone’s approach should be to follow the work of the Prosecutor’s Office. We cannot speak in general terms; we must focus on specific individuals,” Vrajolli told Radio Free Europe.
According to him, the same principle should also be applied to individuals and movements that, referring to the published document, accuse the BIK on social media.
Vrajolli believes that the BIK has contributed to preserving social resilience and restraining currents that could harm social cohesion.
Nevertheless, he warns that the debate that has emerged could also have security consequences.
According to Vrajolli, any development that undermines social cohesion in Kosovo could serve the interests of states that view Kosovo as an adversary.
He sees institutional clarification as one way to prevent the further escalation of the situation.
“I do not believe there has ever been a tendency on the part of the institutions to target a particular group. But often, because of silence, these debates arise. Therefore, I believe it is important that both the Prosecutor’s Office and the other institutions involved in the case provide the necessary explanations,” Vrajolli said.
Miftaraj also warns that the continuation of clashes in interfaith language could harm coexistence and understanding among religious communities.
Meanwhile, Maloku calls for such issues to be addressed calmly, transparently and in institutional language.
The debate sparked by “Top Secret 2” has overshadowed the key questions that institutions have yet to answer: who prepared the document, whether it is authentic and what exactly it proves in the criminal proceedings where it was presented as evidence.
Until these issues are clarified, the claims drawn from the material’s contents cannot be considered established facts. / RFE
