Adriatik Kelmendi writes about the decision of the court to sentence former General Commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), Sylejman Selimi, with 14 years of prison. “There is no greater hierarchical sentence for some KLA member. One cannot find more reliable judges (in principal) than those of the EU states, or to cut it short: Our chief commander of our liberation war was sentenced by European judges. This is bad news, in fact the worst that Kosovo received lately.

As usually in such cases, the public opinion was divided in half: those who claimed that the chief commander was sentenced without any facts and those who in a way welcomed the controversial verdict… Observed cold-bloodedly, the essence of the problem appears to be distrust. In this case, serious and mutual distrust of the Europeans (EULEX, in this case) towards Kosovars and the distrust that Kosovars have started to feel towards Europeans.

If judges of the European countries sentenced the chief commander without facts, it means that Europe for some reason is against us, Albanians, or this war in particular. And if the judges from the European countries sentenced our chief commander of the liberation war with sustainable evidence, judicially reasonable, it means that our war was not as pure as we thought. In both cases, this is a major harm and a major evil for Kosovo. Therefore the just and compromised solution is to involve Kosovo judges together with the European ones in the special court,” writes Kelmendi.