David Schwendiman, a seasoned US attorney and war crimes expert, is being forced to step down as the Specialist Prosecutor (SP) at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office.
The court is dealing with the highly sensitive allegations against leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) for atrocities against ethnic Serbs during and after the conflict in Kosovo 1998, including alleged trafficking in human organs. Schwendiman’s premature departure, without a successor picked out, is said to be the product of “inertia at the US state department” under whose auspices he serves at the Specialist Chambers.
Schwendiman has told The Guardian that all his attempts to try to leave a successor in place have been rebuffed.
“We began to press very hard for an answer about what was going to happen. I wanted to make sure that if I wasn’t going to be extended that was time enough to pick a successor so there’d be as little disruption as possible,” he said.
Before news of his imminent exit was made public, Schwendiman had spoken to journalists in The Hague about how exactly he planned to marshal facts to hold powerful individuals accountable for grave crimes committed in Kosovo between January 1998 and December 2000.
See at: https://justicehub.org/article/kosovo-unexpected-exit-foils-plans-resolute-prosecutor
