The establishment of the court that would deal with crimes committed in Kosovo between 1998 and 2000 should focus on KLA crimes, except the period during the NATO bombing.
It is more likely that the Hague will address another ad hoc criminal tribunal, which will deal with crimes committed in Kosovo only that KLA members are primarily behind. The announcement alarmed Pristina and encouraged divisions in local governance structures. For Albin Kurti, leader of the Kosovo Self-determination movement, the establishment of such a court would be an expression of the capitulation of Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, who hopes he will not be at The Hague.
“Thaci capitulated in his talks with Serbia, and it is no accident that the tribunal comes just after the capitulation. Thaci can stop the tribunal, but thinks that his friends will go to the tribunal, and he will not, and therefore he is not interested in stopping it. Thaci is lying and we all know he’s lying that he was not at war. He was in the territories monitored by the KLA,” said Albin Kurti.
High ranking former leading members of the KLA are not in dispute, and the Pristina-based leadership is thought to be in connection with mafia structures and some prominent European politicians. All this suggests that the “new” Hague tribunal, if established, will be determined according to the existing debt for crimes against Serbs.
There will be, however, some exceptions: it is speculated that the atrocities committed in Kosovo during the NATO bombing in 1999 will be excluded from the criminal trial dealing with crimes between 1998 and 2000. Otherwise, the process would need to involve the role of NATO in cooperation with the KLA.
A more realistic scenario, however, is where any responsibility of the Alliance for crimes during the bombing of Yugoslavia will be “bypassed”, as in the case of the ICTY. And the former chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte mentioned the possibility of an indictment against NATO, which caused a sharp reaction from Washington.
Bringing members of the KLA to justice, due to pressures and intimidation, is not an easy task, according to previous trials in The Hague. Witnesses deny the lists of KLA crimes, and only some would “slip out” about how things were. A case regarding one witness who was first categorically denied KLA’s presence in his village to The Hague court and later during a cross-examination said that the villagers fed and clothed 300 KLA fighters is often mentioned. Or the one when a witness admitted that her husband was a KLA fighter, and then stated that he was killed as a civilian.
The current practice of the ICTY is troubling, considering that the former KLA commander in the Decani area, Ramush Haradinaj, was acquitted of crimes against civilians in western Kosovo in 1998. His associates were released: Idriz Balaj, leader of a special unit of the KLA, and Lah Brahimaj, commander of the camp in Jablanica, who were accused of murder, cruel treatment and inhumane acts, and violating the laws or customs of war in the KLA improvised camp in the village Jablanica.
Will the “new” Hague be more severe towards the KLA? It is still too early to say. Success will depend on the witnesses who must be provided with protection. Intimidation and the killing of witnesses in the case of Haradinaj and his companions are the reasons why the Tribunal favours The Hague, not Pristina.
Few Western media dealt with crimes committed by the KLA. There are certain examples, such as the American journalist Chris Hedges, who wrote a lengthy essay for the Foreign Affairs Journal in 1999 about the financing of the KLA and the bizarre ideological division of the organization: “with a touch of fascism on the one hand, and the additions of communism on the other.”
“The emergence of the militant armed group blurred the hope that even a compromised agreement with Belgrade could be successfully applied. Encouraged by the March NATO bombing of Serbian Army, the KLA will lead a long-term guerrilla war in the Serbian province that could ignite a wider war in neighbouring Macedonia and Albania, and in which potentially Greece and Bulgaria could be drawn. The KLA does not accept compromises in its demand for Kosovo’s independence now, and later for a greater Albania.”
The Western media and public opinion also eventually changed the approach to the KLA. Yet in 1998, the U.S. special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, said that the KLA was “without doubt a terrorist group,” adding that the U.S. “strongly condemns terrorist activities in Kosovo.”
During Slobodan Milosevic’s trial, when his colleagues claimed that KLA activities were sporadic and terrorist in nature, judges estimated that the KLA was a serious armed group, with commanding officers and structure.
