Albania, Kosovo call for probe of ex-Hague Tribunal prosecutor Carla del Ponte
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The comments Sunday came days after the Hague-based tribunal cleared Haradinaj and two others of war crimes charges during a retrial. Haradinaj has twice been acquitted by the U.N. court of charges of murdering Serbs during Kosovo’s 1998-99 war for independence.
Scrutinizing a much-discussed, little-understood, bloody video is
in some ways representative of how the outside world now watches the
war.
Haradinaj’s acquittal came at the end of the U.N. court’s first-ever retrial, which was ordered after appeals judges branded the 2008 acquittals of Haradinaj and Kosovo Liberation Army fighters Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj a “miscarriage of justice” because of widespread intimidation of prosecution witnesses.
Brahimaj was convicted of torture at the first trial and that conviction was not retried, but he has served his sentence and was released with the others.
In a separate case and following the publication of a book from Del Ponte, the European Union has launched another investigation into allegations that a criminal network sold the organs of civilian captives in Kosovo during the war.
A 2010 Council of Europe report alleged that Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and other rebel commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army ran detention centers on Albania’s border with Kosovo, where civilian captives, including Serbs, were killed and their organs sold on the black market during Kosovo’s war for independence from Serbia. Kosovo’s population is predominantly ethnic Albanian.
Both Thaci and Albania have denied those allegations.
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Nebi Qena contributed to this report from Pristina, Kosovo.
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