Lawyers for members of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s ‘Drenica Group’ cell, accused of assaulting prisoners during the late 1990s war, told a court hearing that their clients were not guilty.

Edona Peci, Behar Mustafa
BIRN
Pristina, Mitrovica
Sylejman Selimi.

The defence lawyer for Sylejman Selimi, Pristina’s ambassador to Tirana and Kosovo’s former security forces commander, who is on trial for war crimes alongside six other ex-guerrillas, told the court in Mitrovica on Thursday that his client did not abuse civilian prisoners held at a KLA detention centre in June 1998.

“None of the allegations are beyond reasonable doubt, because my client will be declared not guilty as in the first case against him,” said the lawyer, Tome Gashi, referring to Selimi’s acquittal last month in another war crimes trial.

The seven suspects, who also include the mayor of Skenderaj/Srbice, Sami Lushtaku, are accused of involvement in abuses at the KLA’s Likovc/Likovac detention centre.

Haxhi Millaku, the defence lawyer for one of the other defendants, Sabit Geci, also said his client was innocent because he was not there when the alleged crimes were committed.

Geci is accused of killing a Serb police officer, Ivan Bulatovic, alongside another former member of the ‘Drenica Group’, Sahit Jashari.

But lawyer Millaku said that the killing “happened in June 1998, and there is lots of evidence which proves my client was being treated in a [KLA] military hospital during that time”.

Lushtaku meanwhile is suspected of killing one Albanian prisoner and ill-treating others.

Three of the defendants, including Lushtaku, escaped custody last month and went into hiding at a Pristina clinic for several days in protest at an order to transfer them to a prison in the northern town of Mitrovica, which they said could be dangerous because two high-profile Serbs accused of violent crimes against Albanians were being held there.

Their supporters then seized the clinic to prevent them from being recaptured before they eventually surrendered to police.