Serbia provided war crimes evidence against Kosovo President
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TIRANA, July 14 - Serbia gathered and provided evidence of war crimes against Kosovo's President Hashim Thaci, according to a recent report by BIRN.
Vladimir Vukcevic, former chief war crimes prosecutor, spoke with BIRN about the Serbian authorities gathering evidence to charge President Hashim Thaci with war crimes, which was later passed to investigators in the Hague.
“The Hague prosecution was investigating the crimes of [Kosovo Liberation Army commander turned politician Ramush] Haradinaj [who was ultimately acquitted] and so they went to the Yellow House [building in Albania where prisoners’ organs were allegedly removed], but they did not have a mandate for Albania because the Hague Tribunal itself was exclusively for the countries of the former Yugoslavia,” Vukcevic said to BIRN.
Vukcevic, who served as chief war crimes prosecutor until 2015, explained that he and his colleagues visited 12 sites in Albania, where organ-trafficking victims were thought to have been buried, and found evidence of Thaci’s role in crimes committed by KLA fighters during the Kosovo war. The evidence was shown to the Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty, who then published a report accusing Hashim Thaci of being involved in “organ trafficking, abductions and mistreatment of detainees” during the war.
On June 24 this year, Thaci was indicted on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges, by a special international prosecutor in The Hague, only three days before the special summit with Serbia was due to take place at the White House.
According to a statement released by the Specialist Prosecutor's Office (SPO), the latter has "filed a ten-count Indictment with the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) for the Court's consideration, charging Hashim Thaci, Kadri Veseli, and others with a range of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, enforced disappearance of persons, persecution, and torture." Based on the indictment filed on April 24, President Thaçi, Kosovo DP leader Kadri Veseli and the others are responsible for nearly 100 murders, involving victims of Kosovo Albanian, Serb, Roma, and other ethnicities in addition to including political opponents.
The Special Court, which operates in The Hague under the name Specialized Chambers, was approved in early August 2015 by the Kosovo parliament.
The reason for its establishment followed investigations into allegations by Council of Europe envoy Dick Marty about the involvement of some of the former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army in war crimes and post-war Kosovo. Investigations such as the establishment of the court had provoked reactions and protests in Kosovo, claiming that in this way equality with the atrocities of Serbian forces was taking place during the 1998-1999 war, which ended with the intervention of NATO.
Over 200 former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army have been questioned since the beginning of 2019. In July 2019, former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj was summoned to the special prosecutor's office, who resigned, bringing the country to early elections.
