Kosovo Liberation Army victims call Hague-based court ‘biased’

The heads of the Kosovo Liberation Army Veterans Association said the Hague-based court set up to try those accused of war crimes is “biased”.

Hysni Gucati and Nasim Haradinaj, who are currently being tried at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, said they are not guilty of war crimes and had done nothing wrong in giving confidential court documents to the press.

The court was set up to prosecute crimes committed during the Kosovo-Serbia war between 1998-1999.

“As a proud citizen of the Republic of Kosovo, I declare today that I am being subjected to a process by a biased and selective prosecution,” Haradinaj told the court on Tuesday.

He continued that he and Gucati did not commit any crimes and were protecting the rights and freedoms of the Kosovo people. In September, they were arrested for allegedly receiving leaked documents from the Chambers containing information about protected witnesses in the case against them. It is alleged they asked the media to publish extracts of the documents.

The Chambers are widely disliked in Kosovo as they are seen as an insult to the country’s fight for freedom. They also condemn the lack of a similar court for Serbian war crimes. After the end of the war, over 1,600 Kosovo citizens are still missing, and at least 20,000 rapes of ethnic Albanians are unprosecuted.

(EURACTIV.coml)