Kosovo MPs are to form a commission to clarify whether politicians had any previous knowledge about suspected terrorist groups in Macedonia – including information on those involved in the fighting in Kumanovo.
Kosovo’s parliament is to ccompile a report on all previous knowledge possessed by relevant security institutions relating to the “suspicious movements” of Kosovo citizens in Macedonia.
Media reports have claimed that some of the young men arrested or killed in Kumanovo on May 9th were already being investigated by the Kosovo police.
The two-day Macedonian police raid on the ethnically mixed town in northern Macedonia left ten citizens of Kosovo dead while five Macedonian policemen were also killed.
The Macedonian police raided Kumanovo in search of a group of Kosovars suspected of having organised an earlier raid on a Macedonian border post at Gosince in April.
The police outpost close to the Kosovo border was allegedly attacked by a group claiming to be part of the National Liberation Army, a ethnic Albanian paramilitary organization.
Haxhi Shala, head of the parliamentary commission on the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, said the probe was needed “for Kosovo citizens to able to trust the security institutions”.
MPs are expected to vote on the formation of a commission, which will examine the information that was accessible to Kosovo security institutions, including the police and the Interior Minsitry, prior to the Macedonian police raid on the town of Kumanovo.
Conflicting reports appeared in Kosovo media after the fighting in Kumanovo, with claims that Prime Minister Isa Mustafa and Interior Minister Skender Hyseni had previous knowledge of suspicious movements of Kosovars in Macedonia.
Both men have denied having any previous knowledge of such events.
Security analyst Shpend Kursani says that parliament and the subsequent commission need to be able to clear things up.
“Parliament and the commission need to be able to come out with the facts about the incident, or at least with facts about the knowledge they had prior to the events,” Kursani said, insisting that they owed it to the public to “clear up the inconsistencies” related to the bloodshed in Kumanovo.
