War Crimes Prosecutors to Quiz Albanian Army Ex-Officer

Shehu is one of scores of Albanian army officers who joined the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA in its war against the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police and paramilitaries in 1999.

He is the first known Albanian citizen who is known to have been invited for questioning by the Specialist Prosecutor's Office, which is investigating former KLA guerrillas for crimes allegedly committed during and just after the Kosovo war from 1998 to 2000.

The crimes were allegedly committed in several locations across Kosovo as well as in Kukes and Cahan, in northern Albania, where Kosovo guerrillas allegedly held and abused prisoners.

Top Channel TV reported that Shehu will be quizzed on January 28.

Those who are charged by the Specialist Prosecutor's Office will face trial at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague.

Suspects indicted so far include Kosovo's former President Hashim Thaci and former Democratic Party of Kosovo leader Kadri Veseli, both wartime KLA commanders, alongside two other guerrillas turned politicians, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi. They have all pleaded not guilty.

Albania's parliament voted in December to set up an investigative committee to collect information about investigations conducted by domestic and international bodies into alleged crimes committed by the KLA in Albania.

The committee was the initiative of a ruling Socialist Party politician who said it was intended "to clean up the mud thrown at Albania and the KLA", and came after heated disputes in the country over whether some politicians helped international investigators to probe alleged crime by KLA members.