Former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Sylejman Selimi and three other ex-fighters were cleared of abusing prisoners at a KLA detention centre during the late 1990s conflict.

Edona Peci
BIRN
Pristina

Selimi, who is Pristina’s current ambassador to Tirana and Kosovo’s former security forces commander, was acquitted along with his three former comrades by a court in the northern town of Mitrovica on Thursday of war crimes during the conflict with Serbian forces.

The court ruled that there was no evidence to substantiate the charges filed by EU rule-of-law mission (EULEX) prosecutors.

Selimi was accused of repeatedly assaulting two ethnic Albanian women who were being held at a KLA detention centre in Likovc/Likovac during the conflict at the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999.

“The defendant in the capacity of a high-profile KLA member, in co-perpetration with some other unidentified KLA members, violated the bodily integrity of Witness A and Witness B, two Albanian civilians, by continuously beating them up,” the indictment alleged.

The other defendants were Shefki Hyseni, Nexhat Qubreli and Ismet Haxha.

The indictment was mainly based on the testimonies of the two female victims from the Mitrovica region.

Hyseni was accused of raping Witness A, while Haxha and Qubreli allegedly mistreated both witnesses at a KLA base in Vaganica.

Although acquitted of these charges, Selimi also faces another war crimes trial in the high-profile ‘Drenica Group’ case.

He and several other ex-KLA fighters are accused of a series of separate crimes against civilian prisoners at the Likovc/Likovac detention centre. They have denied the charges.