Wrote: Etrit Rexhepi
A photo has been published on Facebook, showing two people dressed in Serbian police uniforms, with the caption claiming that one of them is the father of Kosovo's president, Vjosa Osmani.
it CONTENT was published on Monday (September 15) by a website called "Shqip Zone".
The truth?
Hibrid.info has found that the claim is not accurate.
As of this writing, this content has received 107 likes, 76 comments, and 21 shares.
Hibrid.info has researched through the automated search program “InVID” and found this content with this claim, published by various publishers five years ago (see here).
Hibrid.info found several articles published by several Albanian-language media outlets, reporting that the person in the photo who was claimed to be Vjosa Osmani's father is Milan Martiq (see here and here). Also, the photo of Martić in a Serbian police uniform was published on the Croatian portal “24 hours. hr".
Who is Milan Martic?
Milan Martić is a former Serbian politician who served as president of the self-proclaimed Serbian Republic, inhabited mainly by Croatian Serbs, which sought to secede from Croatia during the Croatian War of Independence (see here).
After the end of the war, Martić was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). On 12 June 2007, he was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to 35 years in prison. As of 2009, he has been serving his sentence in Estonia.
Also, among the publications encountered, it was found that President Osmani in 2020, through a status, had denied the claims published through this photo (see here).
Whereas, in the past, hibrid.info has addressed the claim that Vjosa Osmani's father collaborated with the Serbian regime, assessing it as unsubstantiated (see here).
The aforementioned Raif Osmani himself denied the allegations in an interview with "T7" television (see here).
Analyze:
The claim that the father of the President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, is seen in a photograph showing two people wearing Serbian police uniforms is not accurate.
Hibrid.info found that the person in the photograph is actually Milan Martić, a former Serbian politician and convicted war crimes suspect.
Based on its work methodology, hibrid.info assesses the content as "Fake News".
Reasoning:
The “Fake News” rating is given to informational content that is entirely fabricated or that contains factually incorrect claims or information. Content that is rated as fake news can be defined as having been created and distributed with the intent to misinform the public, i.e., to present a claim that is completely false as fact.