Kosovo Liberation Army

Ismail Berbatovci closed the door of his apartment in the small central Kosovo town of Lipjan/Ljipljane for the last time on the morning of July 23, 1998.

His wife Peme remembers that he went out to do an interview with Rame Buja, a senior leader from the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, at the guerrilla force's local base in the nearby mountains.

The pre-trial judge at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, Nicolas Guillou, extended detention for Hashim Thaci ahead of his trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo.

Judge Guillou turned down a defence request for the release of Thaci, who was one of the wartime leaders of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA.

The judging panel in the case against former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Salih Mustafa at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers issued a ruling last year about compensation for victims which noted that Kosovo's Law on the Kosovo Specialist Chambers does not set specific criteria for how compensation can be obtained.

The leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army's War Veterans Organization, Hysni Gucati, on trial for war crimes before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in the Hague, told the court he had been "set a trap" by leaked documents. 

It should be known that he belongs to an organized criminal clan. His uncle is Adem Jashari, who was killed in clashes with our security forces, but it is especially interesting that Bashkim Jashari was one of the zone commanders in the so-called Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) since 2003, and that he was suspected of some criminal activities back then", Drecun told RTS.

Svetomir Bacevic stands accused of seizing a 60-year-old ethnic Albanian civilian from her home in the village of Bellopje/Belo Polje in Kosovo's Peja/Pec municipality in the summer of 1998, according to the indictment which has been obtained by BIRN.

A protected witness told the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Tuesday that he saw five or six people beating a prisoner who was being held in an improvised detention facility in the village of Zllash/Zlas, some 30 kilometres east of Kosovo's capital Pristina, during the war in 1999.

The leader of the KLA War Veterans' Association, Hysni Gucati, and his deputy Nasim Haradinaj insisted on Monday that they are innocent of obstruction of justice and witness intimidation, and denounced the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, which was set up to prosecute crimes committed during the Kosovo war.

The appeals chamber at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Wednesday rejected ex-President Hashim Thaci's plea for conditional release from pre-trial detention because there is still a risk that he might abscond.

Halil Berisha, a journalist from Pristina, told the trial of Kosovo Liberation Army War Veterans' Organisation leaders Hysni Gucati and Nasim Haradinaj at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Tuesday how he received the allegedly leaked war crimes case files from the defendants.