Goraždevac

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Goraždevac (Serbian: Гораждевац, known in Albanian as Kastrat) is a village near the city of Peć in the UN administered province of Kosovo in Serbia. It has been inhabited since at least the 13th century, when it was mentioned in the chrysobull of Stefan Nemanja (or his son, Stefan the First-Crowned).^{[citation needed]}

The village possesses the oldest log-cabin church in Serbia, constructed at the end of the 16th century and dedicated to Saint Jeremiah. Although very small, it has a complete nave and narthex. The old icons and church vessels are now kept in a new church in the vicinity of the old one. In the late 1970s the church underwent extensive conservation and restoration works.

As a Serb-inhabited enclave in a heavily Albanian-inhabited region of western Kosovo, Goraždevac has for several years been the scene of ethnic tensions between the two communities. It was the scene of attacks by the extremist guerilla group, the "Kosovo Liberation Army", in the late 1990s. After the end of the Kosovo War in June 1999, many of its population of around 2,000 Serbs fled attacks by Albanian militants, though some later returned. The population today is said to be around 850 people. The village has come under repeated attack by Albanian extremists since the end of the Kosovo War and is one of a number of Kosovo Serb enclaves under 24-hour guard by troops from KFOR.

In August 2003, a Serbian man of 19 and a boy of 12 were shot and killed, with four more children wounded, while swimming in the Bistrica river at Goraždevac. The incident sparked a wave of anti-Serbian violence across Kosovo. It was widely blamed on Albanian extremists but the culprits have not yet been found.

In June 2003, Veselin Besović from Goraždevac was sentenced by an international court in Peć to serve seven years in prison for crimes allegedly committed in the villages of Čuska and Zahać.^[1] He has appealed.[1]