07 Oct 14

A witness told the trial of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s ‘Drenica Group’ cell, accused of assaulting wartime prisoners, that an EU prosecutor bribed him to falsify his statement.

BIRN
Mitrovica

The protected witness codenamed ‘F’ on Tuesday retracted incriminating statements he made about the defendants in the high-profile trial, claiming that a former prosecutor from the EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo (EULEX) had offered him a bribe to write false testimony in his name.

Witness F told the court in Mitrovica that former EULEX prosecutor Maurizio Salustro had written what he wanted in the statement.

“Salustro compiled this in order to fulfil promises to me,” said the witness.

Asked by the judge what he was promised by Salustro, Witness F responded: “He told me he will send me abroad and that will help me recover my wife because she suffers from cancer.”

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 fighters are on trial for allegedly torturing and mistreating prisoners at a detention centre in Likovc/Likovac in 1998.

Witness F, a former prisoner in Likovc/Likovac, said that some of the defendants had treated him well while he was in captivity, contrary to what he wrote in his statement to the EULEX prosecutor.

Asked whether he was arrested by one of the defendants, Ismet Haxha, as he said in his statement, the witness replied: “No, I never saw this man.”

The trial continues on Wednesday.