A year and a half after the Hague Tribunal has released him from war crimes charges for the second time Ramus Haradinaj has the opportunity to sit again in the seat of Kosovo Prime Minister.
In 2005 Haradinaj was occupying the post of Kosovo Prime Minister but left it only a hundred days later after the charges for war crimes had been raised against him. “I will work for European and economically developed Kosovo in which law and order shall rule. I undertake the obligation that every citizen of Kosovo feel free,” Haradinaj told the Express daily in Pristina. That daily earlier publicized the text of the coalition agreement that Haradinj, the leader of the Alliance for Kosovo Future’ (AAK) signed with Isa Mustafa of the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo (LDK) and Fatmir Ljimaj, leader of the Initiative for Kosovo (NISMA).
President of the Executive Board of the Forum for Ethnic Relations Dusan Janjic says that Haradinaj’s election to the post of the Prime Minister confirms claims that the West actually wants to use the people whose trials have been finalized, for introduction of order and rule of law in Kosovo. “A huge job would wait Haradinaj, to finalize about 200 court cases being led against many who were together with him in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA),” Janjic says.
His eventual election for Kosovo Prime Minister coincides with passing of the law according to which Kosovo will get a Special Court for war crimes that would in the first place deal with the findings from Dick Martin’s report over human organs trafficking. One of the first clients of that court might be nobody else but former Prime Minister Hashim Thaci who is believed to have played a very important role in that trade.
Unlike Janjic, the Serbian war crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic does not believe that election of Haradinaj for the Prime Minister will bring anything good. “Serbia has raised charges against him for at least 60 victims. He was accused for the most serious crimes by the Hague Tribunal. It is well known that the court proceedings were led under specific circumstances. I am concerned as to how his election would affect communication between Belgrade and Pristina in the sphere of legislation. The question is also what effect that is going to have on the work of the future tribunal for the KLA,” Prosecutor Vuckovic says.
The most serious war crimes
- In April Haradinaj said to think that establishment of a special war crimes court was a step backwards for Kosovo.
- Ramush Haradinaj (46) was involved in crime when young. He left Yugoslavia under the name of Smajilj in 1989 and went to Switzerland where he got political asylum. He there joined the so-called ‘National Movement of Kosovo’, an extremist organization within which the KLA was formed later on. The KLA started acting as a terrorist organization. According to available media data, in 1996 Haradinaj underwent a military training in Albania. He participated in setting up of camps in Kukes and Tropoja in the north of Albania.
- At the beginning of 1998 he became the KLA commander. Under his command the KLA killed more than 300 people, mainly Serbs and ‘not loyal’ Albanians and abducted more than 400 in just two years. Even 108 cases of criminal charges have been raised against Haradinaj in Serbia for the most serious war crimes, from massacre to raping.
- He was one of several commanders to whom the NATO gave satellite telephones in order to coordinate attacks during air strikes in 1999. After beginning of the trial against him at the Hague Tribunal, 19 witnesses that were to testify against him were killed.
