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Thaci’s appearance at the Hague court in November 2020 is shown at a bar in Pristina. Photo: EPA-EFE/VALDRIN XHEMAJ
Pre-trial judge Nicolas Guillou has dismissed an attempt by former Kosovo president and wartime Kosovo Liberation Army political leader Hashim Thaci and two of his co-defendants, Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi, to have the charges against them thrown out.
Guillou said in his ruling, which was published online on Wednesday evening, that there was “no violation of the accused’s constitutional rights”, and that “Mr Thaci’s right to be presumed innocent has not been violated”.
In his defence’s legal challenge in March, Thaci claimed that the mandate of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers had expired and that the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office no longer had a constitutional and legal basis to conduct additional investigations.
Thaci also claimed there had been violations of his right to a fair and impartial hearing within a reasonable time, his right to be presumed innocent, and his right to be tried by an independent and impartial tribunal.
He alleged that the Specialist Chambers had explicitly endorsed a Council of Europe report which “contains words and statements which clearly reflect the opinion that he was guilty before it had been proved according to law”.
The Council of Europe report, published in 2011, contained grave allegations against senior Kosovo Liberation Army figures including Thaci, which eventually led to the establishment of the Specialist Chambers.
But the pre-trial judge said the report “has not been used to underpin any of the criminal charges with which Mr Thaci has ultimately been charged. On the contrary, the present charges stem from an independent and impartial criminal investigation.”
He also said that no official of the Specialist Chambers has made “prejudicial statements” against Thaci since he was charged in 2019.
The indictment in the case alleges that Thaci and his three co-defendants, Veseli, Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi, who were also leading politicians in post-war Kosovo, committed war crimes and crimes against humanity when they were senior figures in the Kosovo Liberation Army in the late 1990s.
They are accused of having been part of a “joint criminal enterprise” that aimed to take control over Kosovo during the war “by means including unlawfully intimidating, mistreating, committing violence against, and removing those deemed to be opponents”. They have all pleaded not guilty.
In a separate development, trial preparation conferences were held on Wednesday and Thursday in another case at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, against KLA Veterans’ Organisation leader Hysni Gucati and his deputy Nasim Haradinaj.
Gucati and Haradinaj are charged with obstructing justice and intimidating witnesses after batches of confidential case files from the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, which was set up to try former KLA guerrillas, were leaked to them, and both men urged media in Kosovo to publish the material.
On Wednesday the prosecution claimed the two files contained confidential information, including documents from the Serbian authorities and the identities of several witnesses.
Witness-tampering is a key concern for the Specialist Chambers, after problems caused by intimidation in other KLA-related war crimes cases at the UN tribunal in The Hague and in Kosovo itself.
