The Hague, 03 April 2023, dtt-net.com – Former Kosovan President, Hashim Thaçi, and three other former top leaders of now disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which fought during the 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia, pleaded not guilty to war crimes charges as trial at the special tribunal in The Hague begun today.
Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi are charged by the prosecution on the basis of “individual criminal responsibility with six counts of crimes against humanity: persecution, imprisonment, other inhumane acts, torture, murder, and enforced disappearance of persons. Each of the accused is also charged with four counts of war crimes: illegal and arbitrary arrest and detention, cruel treatment, torture, and murder.”
“I understand the amended indictment and I am completely innocent”, Thaçi answered to the charges.
Veseli, Krasniqi and Selimi also pleaded not guilty.
According to the prosecution, the alleged crimes charged were committed from “at least March 1998 through September 1999 and took place in several locations across Kosovo as well as in Kukës and Cahan, in Northern Albania.”
The indictment alleges that Thaçi, Veseli, Selimi and Krasniqi are “individually criminally responsible, pursuant to various forms of criminal responsibility, for crimes which were committed in the context of a non-international armed conflict in Kosovo and were part of a widespread and systematic attack against persons suspected of being opposed to the KLA.”
Formation of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office was triggered by a report of the Swiss politician, Dick Marty, adopted in 2011 by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Marty said in its report that former leaders of the KLA were involved in human organ harvesting of Serb and Albanian civilians during and after the 1998-1999 war, which they deny.
But, the indictments by the prosecution do not include human harvesting allegations.
The office of the prosecution of the special court in The Hague is still ignoring war crimes committed by Serbia army, police and paramilitaries on ethnic Albanian civilians during the two-year war of independence, despite that the EU says that existing legal framework enables investigation and prosecution of “all alleged war crimes”.
The EU Council of Minister in June 2019 said that the law of August 2015 of Kosovo parliament, with which the court was formed, enables the court to tackle all crimes, including those committed by the regime of the then President of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic.
“The existing legal framework enables proper investigation and prosecution of all alleged war crimes,” reads the text of conclusions of the EU Council.
But no charges are filed against any members of Serbia forces so far, despite.
Nearly 13,000 Albanian civilians were massacred by Serb forces, 20,000 girls and women raped, 120,000 houses destroyed during the war and more than 800,000 deported forcibly to Albania and North Macedonia.
