Loading...
You are here:  Home  >  Articles from Kosovo media  >  Current Article

U.S. Vice President Biden on visit to Kosovo (media)

By   /  19/08/2016  /  No Comments

    Print       Email

Several media are covering United States Vice President Joe Biden’s post on Facebook about his recent visit to Kosovo. Biden wrote: “In 2001 and 2002, my son Beau served our U.S. Department of Justice abroad by helping train judges and prosecutors in Kosovo as it began to overcome the war and war crimes committed there over the previous decades. And this week, my family and I had the honor to stand alongside the people of Kosovo as they named a highway between two of their great cities in Beau’s honor. Beau had volunteered to be one of the U.S. federal representatives in Kosovo helping put together the training programs for local judges and prosecutors, and laying the groundwork for what would become Kosovo’s Judicial Institute, which I’m told still operates to this very day. At that time, when the wounds of war were fresh and the landscape was still scarred with abandoned vehicles and earth that had been blown up, at that time, Kosovo’s justice system had been hollowed out by decades of totalitarian rule. Beau played a small part, but he played a part, in making sure that the war crimes were prosecuted and, most importantly, from his perspective, prosecuted based on hard evidence, not on emotion. He helped introduce and develop for the first time in Kosovo’s legal system, a system built on what we call the adversarial model, where the role of the prosecutor is not just to prosecute but to do justice. And the accused is entitled to a defense, no matter how reprehensible the accused may be. I have always been proud of him, but I was never more proud of him than when I was with him in Kosovo. He and his brother are cut from the same cloth — men of courage. My mother had an expression that applies to my son, Hunter, and his brother, Beau. She said, remember, Joe: you’re defined by your courage and you’re redeemed by your loyalty. I think that’s why we both have come to love Kosovo so much. Beau not only threw himself into his work but he really did come to love the people, the cultures, the history of the incredible country of Kosovo. As a family, we Bidens are working to focus on what Beau was about and devote our lives to making fulfilled what he fought so hard for. That’s how how my family views this memorial. Five, 10, 20, 60 years from now, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, my great-great-grandchildren, every Biden born will make the trip to Kosovo. Every Biden born will make the trip to see that monument to their father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great grandfather”.

    Print       Email

You might also like...

CEC decides on vote recount in additional 530 polling stations (Telegrafi)

Read More →