Kosovo Specialist Chambers

Rrustem Mustafa, former commander of Kosovo Liberation Army's wartime Llap Operational Zone, also known by the nom de guerre Remi, told the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague this week in the trial of former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and three co-defendants that the guerrilla force mainly functioned from the bottom up and did not have a fully-established chain of command.

During a joint meeting on Monday in Pristina between the governments of Kosovo and Albania, Prime Minister Edi Rama said that he will personally submit a report to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg being prepared in Albania's parliament querying the Dick Marty report and what he alleged was its Russian influence.

The pre-trial judge at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, Nicolas Guillou, decided on Thursday that Hashim Thaci and Kadri Veseli should remain in detention ahead of their trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo.

This is because, according to the law, courts should instruct victims in war crime trials to claim compensation in civil proceedings. But this is complicated, officials say.

Compensation from the state can be requested if the victim is unable to get restitution from the convicted defendant or from other sources.

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 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. 

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.

Hysni Gucati and Nasim Haradinaj went on trial at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Thursday, charged with obstruction of justice and witness intimidation after they received leaked documents from war crimes case files and urged media to publish confidential information from the documents in September 2020.