Dhurata Hoxha

Kosovo's Special Prosecution has filed an indictment against former Minister for European Integration Dhurata Hoxha and four current and former officials of the ministry over a contract that saw budget money spent on a Paris-based PR company that promoted Kosovo's "territorial modification" as a way to solve the Kosovo- Serbia dispute two years ago.

The family of the late Vetevendosje activist Astrit Dehari claim the results of an autopsy conducted by Swiss experts show he was murdered in detention in Prizren in 2016.

Dehari died in the correctional facility in the western Kosovo city after being arrested on suspicion of terrorism for allegedly throwing an explosive device in the parliament.

The parliamentary group of the biggest Kosovo opposition party, the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK on Tuesday demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj and his deputy, Fatmir Limaj, after a statement from European Commissioner Johannes Hahn that visa liberalisation with the EU is more likely to come by 2020 than the hoped-for end of 2018.

The European parliament's committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, LIBE, will take a vote on Thursday on visa liberalisation for Kosovo, following a debate on the issue on Wednesday.

The rapporteur for Kosovo at the Parliament, Tanja Fajon, met Kosovo's Minister for European Integration, Dhurata Hoxha, who went to Brussels to follow the process.

A Kosovo parliamentary debate on the death of Astrit Dehari, an activist from the Vetevendosje party, was interrupted when a minister from the ruling party said the issue was being "instrumentalised" in the interest of "pro-Russian circles".

A draft law to recriminalise defamation, proposed earlier this year and strongly opposed by journalists and civil society groups, has divided candidates from the coalition between the Kosovo Democratic Party, PDK, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK and the Initiative for Kosovo, NISMA, which are running together in the June 11 polls.

An MP from the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, Nait Hasani, has been criticized for proposing an amendment that would cut prison sentences by a third, by counting 24 hours spent in prison as 36 hours of sentence.

Hasani, who was a political prisoner under Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian regime, told BIRN that his aim was to improve the behaviour of prisoners.

Kosovo civil society activists have called another protest on Thursday in Pristina's main Skenderbeg Square over the death of Vetevendosje activist Astrit Dehari who died early in November in a jail in Prizren.

The rallty is supported by thousands of social media users using the hashtag #JusticeForAstrit or Albanian #DrejtesiPerAstritin.