New highway inauguration disrupted in Kosovo

TIRANA, Nov. 27 – Inauguration of the new highway segment in Kosovo that would link it with Albania was considered to be part of the celebrations for the 10th anniversary of independence. That was a failure as it could not be held Tuesday.
A few hundred Kosovar former rebel fighters disrupted the launch of the motorway demanding the release of Fatmir Limaj, a commander turned government minister who was arrested on war crimes charges last week. The crowd, mostly Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) veterans, occupied the stage at the opening ceremony in Gjurgjica, central Kosovo, for two hours in a reminder of the fiercely nationalistic emotions that remain more than 13 years after the 1998-99 independence war against Serb forces. They destroyed the place throwing away the chairs put there. A helicopter carrying Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha to the ceremony was turned back while his Kosovar counterpart Hashim Thaci failed to turn up.
The 60-km highway, which gives landlocked Kosovo a faster exit to the Adriatic coast, was opened to traffic without a ceremony.
“Today Kosovo will not celebrate until our comrades are released,” a protest organizer told the crowd.
Limaj was charged in 2011 with ordering the killing of two Serb captives and torturing another during the war at a prison close to where the motorway ceremony was staged. Limaj was acquitted a year later. But Kosovo’s supreme court, made of a panel of local judges and the country’s European Union mission (EULEX), ordered a retrial and he was re-arrested on Saturday.
Limaj remains a prominent figure as a member of the Kosovo parliament and deputy leader of Thaci’s ruling Democratic Party Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008.
Thaci criticized EULEX calling Limaj’s re-arrest “unacceptable and shameful”. The EU representative in Kosovo Samuel Zbogar warned Kosovar politicians not to interfere in the judicial process.