The heads of the Kosovo Liberation Army Veterans’ Association called the Hague-based war crimes court ‘biased’ and said they had done nothing wrong by revealing confidential court documents to media.
Psychoanalyst Wiola Rebecka says her new book about sexual assault during wartime highlights how rape survivors in Kosovo felt afraid to tell anyone about what happened to them, prolonging the trauma that they suffered.
Kosovo’s Supreme Court upheld the verdict sentencing Nenad Arsic to six years in prison for assaulting two Kosovo Albanians and forcing one to drink alcohol and sing a Serbian song during a police operation in 1999.
Kosovo police on Sunday announced the arrest of five persons suspected of planning terrorist attacks, all of whom are reportedly well known to the authorities.
Kosovo Liberation Army War Veterans’ Organisation leader Hysni Gucati and his deputy Nasim Haradinaj went on trial for obstruction of justice and witness intimidation related to leaked documents from war crimes cases.
Former reservist policeman Goran Stanisic was sentenced to 20 years in prison for participating in the killings and expulsions of Kosovo Albanian civilians in the municipality of Lipjan/Lipljan during the war in 1999.
The first witness at the trial of former Kosovo Liberation Army unit commander Salih Mustafa, who is accused of illegally detaining and torturing prisoners in 1999, testified that he was beaten until he lost consciousness.
Under a scheme to give victims a voice in war crime cases, a statement was delivered at the opening of the Hague trial of ex-guerrilla Salih Mustafa, claiming alleged victims of Kosovo Liberation Army fighters have been intimidated into silence.
A pre-trial judge at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague rejected a legal challenge by Kosovo’s former President Hashim Thaci to the indictment charging him with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Kosovo has begun to develop a national transitional justice strategy, intended to address the unresolved legacies of the 1998-99 war - but questions remain over whether the political will exists to avoid a ‘mono-ethnic’ initiative.