The Special Court for Kosovo (KSC) will deliver its verdict on Wednesday (May 18th) in the trial of two veterans of Kosovo’s war of independence against Serbia in the 1990s, accused of witness intimidation.
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Hysni Gucati and Nasim Haradinaj, respectively leader and deputy leader of an organization of veterans of the Albanian separatist guerrilla, the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), are accused of being part of a group that seeks to obstruct Justice. Both men were arrested by heavily armed EU police during a raid on the veterans headquarters in Pristina in September 2020 and transferred to The Hague to stand trial at the Kosovo Special Court (KSC) . Both pleaded not guilty when the trial opened in October.
Several former commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) are under investigation for war crimes committed during the conflict (1998-1999), which left 13,000 dead and which opposed, in what was to at the time a province in the south of Serbia, the independence guerrillas to the Serbian forces. Kosovo’s former president and former KLA political leader Hashim Thaçi – who resigned in 2020 after his indictment – faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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According to the court prosecutor, the two men disparage anyone cooperating with the court, calling them“spies” and of “collaborators” who have “betrayed” their compatriots. Gucati and Haradinaj are accused of revealing classified information from the court, including identifying details of witnesses, during three press conferences between September 7 and September 25, 2020. They are charged with two counts of obstruction of officials and four other heads of“intimidation during criminal proceedings, reprisals and breach of procedural secrecy”the court said in a statement.
The veterans association said it received confidential court files, sent anonymously, which included information about protected witnesses and pending indictments. The Special Court for Kosovo (KSC) is a body under Kosovar law composed of international judges and responsible for investigating crimes committed by the KLA during and after the conflict. Created in 2015, it sits in the Netherlands to protect witnesses who are under pressure and threats. The first trial held by the KSC opened in September, against Salih Mustafa, a former KLA leader, accused of torture and murder in a detention center during the war with Serbia.
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Many KLA veterans are fiercely hostile to the tribunal’s work, defending the legitimacy of their “war of liberation” against Serbian forces.