Balkaninsight.com

Albania is marking 27 years since thousands of people fleeing communist rule took refuges in Western embassies – becoming the first to challenge the regime.

The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has turned down Croatia’s request to be allowed to participate in the trial of six former Bosnian Croat officials from the Herzeg-Bosna wartime statelet.

Hearings have started in Tirana in a case brought by Gjin Gjoni, an Appeals Court Judge, and his wife, Elona Caushi, who claim they suffered 'moral anguish' from BIRN reports and seek compensation.

At the retrial of former Serbian security chiefs Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic in The Hague, a prosecution witness said Serb police robbed and killed Croats in an attack on a Croatian village in 1991.

President Milorad Dodik said Serb-dominated Republika Srpska will have no reason to remain in Bosnia and Herzegovina if the country's Constitutional Court approves state holidays not celebrated by Serbs.

Trepca ’89 may have lost their chance to enter the UEFA’s Champions League, but its players are savouring their chance to finally experience playing in European tournaments.

Milojko Nikolic, a former Serbian soldier accused of involvement in the massacre of more than 100 Kosovo Albanians during the 1999 war, has died before the end of his trial in Belgrade.

The state appeals court upheld the 13-year sentence handed down to former Bosnian Serb military policeman Zeljko Stanarevic for his participation in the killings of at least ten Bosniak civilians in 1992.

Serbia spent over 74 million euros from the state budget in the last five years on organising elections - and more than 60 per cent of the cash went on unnecessary snap polls, a report says.

Despite protests by artists and activists, the Sofia municipality is determined to remove a highly contested monument to ‘1,300 Years of Bulgaria’ from the centre of the capital. 

The ruling Social Democratic Party is sent to announce its new cabinet, with interim Economy Minister Mihai Tudose becoming premier, after a political crisis led the party to oust its own government last week.

German NGO Rigardu said it has documented the alleged beating and mistreatment of refugees by Croatian police officers on the border with Serbia and on the border with Slovenia in June.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has intensified the Kremlin’s threatening rhetoric against Montenegro over its NATO membership – but was he attempting to scare Serbia too?

The UN special envoy in the Macedonia-Greece 'name' dispute, Matthew Nimetz, will visit Skopje at the end of this week as Macedonia seeks to revive its stalled Euro-Atlantic integration bid.

At the retrial of former Serbian security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, a witness said Serb paramilitary groups like Arkan’s Tigers and the Red Berets carried out ethnic cleansing under Belgrade’s command.

A Bosnian Serb organisation sparked anger by announcing it will install a memorial in Srebrenica to the former Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, who vetoed a Srebrenica genocide resolution.

Ilija Jurisic, a former policeman from Tuzla in Bosnia, filed a suit against Serbia demanding compensation for the three-and-a-half years he spent in detention after his arrest on war crimes charges.

A Dutch appeals court found the Netherlands partially liable for the deaths of around 300 Bosniaks from Srebrenica who were killed after being expelled from a Dutch UN peacekeepers’ base in 1995.

The Belgrade authorities have been mocked on social media after they announced that they will install one of the world’s tallest flagpoles to fly a huge Serbian flag.

Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic said that he will ask the city assembly for the square named after former Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito to be renamed the Square of the Republic of Croatia.