08 Oct 14
Another witness in the trial of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s ‘Drenica Group’ cell, accused of assaulting wartime prisoners, has denied an earlier statement he made that incriminated the defendants.

BIRN
Mitrovica

A protected witness at the trial of the seven former fighters told the court in Mitrovica that he did not remember which KLA guerrillas took his brother away, despite his earlier statement that defendant Ismet Haxha was one of them.

“I don’t know if I said that, but maybe I said that because people were saying so,” said the protected witness codenamed ‘O’.

His disavowal of his earlier statement follows a similar incident in the trial on Tuesday, when another protected witness contradicted his initial testimony to say that he was not ill-treated at the Likovc/Likovac detention centre after he was detained by KLA fighters, as he had previously claimed.

On trial are Pristina’s former ambassador to Albania and Kosovo Security Force ex-commander Sylejman Selimi, along with the mayor of Skenderaj/Srbica, Sami Lushtaku, and five other former KLA members including Ismet Haxha.

They are accused of torturing and mistreating prisoners at the Likovc/Likovac detention centre in 1998.

Another protected witness codenamed ‘N’ also testified on Wednesday that his relative (Witness F in the trial) was detained at the Likovc/Likovac detention centre by KLA fighters.

Ismet Haxha is accused of shooting and wounding Witness F.

Witness N said he heard his relative had been shot, but did not know who did it.

“I told him that he deserved a bullet in the head and not in the foot, because I warned him earlier that something bad would happen to him, since everyone knew that he was a Serbian spy,” said Witness N.

Asked by the prosecutor what happened to his relative after he was detained at Likovc/Likovac, Witness N responded: “I do not know, because he has not told me these things. What happened to him, he knows best.”