Nearly four months after Miladin “Minja” Kovacevic was arrested on assault charges for severely beating a fellow student, the former Binghamton University men’s basketball player has been spotted training with a local team in his native Serbia.

Bryan Steinhauer, the victim of the alleged assault by Kovacevic and two other men at The Rathskeller Pub on State Street in Downtown Binghamton on May 4, remains hospitalized near his Brooklyn home.

Kovacevic fled the United States for Serbia on June 9, three days after posting bail. He was seen last week training with teammates of the KK Vrbas, a Serbian basketball club that he signed with in mid-July.

According to a July 24 press conference held by Steinhauer’s parents, Richard and Marlene Steinhauer, their son is slowly emerging from a medically induced coma, but his prognosis is still “uncertain.”

At the time of the press conference, Steinhauer was unable to speak, walk or eat. Richard Steinhauer declined to comment to Pipe Dream on his son’s current condition.

Steinhauer, 22, weighed about 130 pounds and was a senior at BU at the time of the attack. The 20-year-old Kovacevic is 6-foot-9, 260 pounds and was a sophomore. He was summarily suspended and banned from BU in connection with the assault. The fight reportedly began when Steinhauer groped a girlfriend of one of the defendants.

Steinhauer received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the School of Management in May, according to University spokeswoman Gail Glover. Kovacevic was not going to have his scholarship renewed for the 2008-09 basketball season.

On June 6, Kovacevic was released from Broome County jail on $100,000 bail. He turned in his Serbian passport in accordance with the conditions of his release, but was able to illegally obtain an emergency passport from Serbian Deputy Consul Igor Milosevic. He used it to flee the United States three days later on a Lufthansa flight out of Newark to Frankfurt, Germany.

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said on July 21 that Kovacevic would not return to the United States to face charges because the country does not allow extradition of its citizens. Milosevic, along with another diplomat, is facing disciplinary and possibly criminal charges in Serbia for allegedly aiding Kovacevic.

According to Kovacevic’s lawyer, Veselin Cerovic, the fugitive left the country because he does not believe in the U.S. justice system.

U.S. officials gave Serbia a 10-day window to extradite Kovacevic, but the country failed to do so — even after Sen. Hillary Clinton emphasized the risk of damaging United States-Serbian relations in a telephone call to Jeremic. When Serbia did not meet the Aug. 1 deadline, Sen. Charles E. Schumer declared the beginning stages of plans to cut foreign aid to the country. Since then Serbian officials have reported efforts to persuade Kovacevic to return to the United States on his own.

“We are glad Serbia is trying to get Mr. Kovacevic to voluntarily return to the United States, but we need more than that,” Schumer said in a statement released last week. “We will continue to formally put pressure on the Serbian government until Mr. Kovacevic is returned to the U.S. so that he can fully account for what he has done.”

Kovacevic was offered a plea deal bargain from the United States last week — in which he would plead guilty to charges of assault and evading justice, and spend 12 years in prison — but turned the offer down, Cerovic said.

Two Bosnian men, Sanel Softic of Binghamton and Edin Dzubur of Johnson City, were charged with gang assault in the first degree and assault in the first degree, according to Senior Assistant District Attorney Cheryl Mancini.

Both Softic and Dzubur were released from jail earlier this month, after posting bail and surrendering their passports, on the grounds that they would be electronically monitored.

Mancini said no trial date has been set for the pair, and all three men face anywhere from five to 25 years in prison.

On the court, Kovacevic did not play during the 2007-08 season, the first under new head coach Kevin Broadus, because of injury. According to BU athletic department policy, performance issues are not factors in determining whether scholarships are renewed. Kovacevic was recruited as a freshman by former head coach Al Walker for the 2006-07 season, in which he averaged 1.5 points and 2.5 rebounds in 9.3 minutes per game.

— Evan Drellich contributed reporting to this article.

— Information from The Associated Press and the Press & Sun-Bulletin was used in this report.