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Ramush Haradinaj is the most senior ethnic Albanian indicted by the Hague tribunal Former Kosovan Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj is going back on trial at The Hague in its first-ever partial retrial for war crimes. He is due to re-appear before the UN War Crimes Tribunal after his 2008 acquittal was overturned on grounds of witness intimidation. The former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighter and two co-accused are being retried. It is the first partial retrial ordered by the UN War Crimes Tribunal. It follows an appeal by the prosecution against the acquittal in 2008 of Mr Haradinaj. The indictment...

The conflict that raged throughout the former Yugoslavia was met by a wall of silence when it came to important issues. These important issues apply to America and the United Kingdom supporting Islamists in a brutal civil war in Bosnia and then installing a new nation by ignoring international law in Kosovo. Also, is it credible to believe that the vast majority of major news agencies and national governments did not know about thousands of Islamists in Europe who were sent to slit the throats and behead Orthodox Christians? Shoeless Holbrooke sits with Muslim Albanian gunmen that ran the organ...

Pristina, 21 May (AKI) – Kosovo Albanian journalist Baton Hadziju has been arrested and faces charges for contempt of the United Nations' Hague-based Yugoslav war crimes tribunal after he allegedly identified a secret witness in a trial. Hadziju, until recently the editor of the leading Albanian language daily Koha ditore and currently director of another daily Ekspres, was arrested in Pristina on Tuesday and has been transferred to The Hague (photo), Kosovo police said. Prosecutors at the tribunal allege that Baton Haxhiu, the editor of a newspaper, last year obtained information about a witness with a protected identity and then...

03 April 2008 Pristina // Former Kosovo Prime Minister, Ramush Haradinaj has been found not guilty by The Hague War Crimes Tribunal. Haradinaj was accused of taking part in a conspiracy to drive Serbs out of Kosovo through murder, rape and torture. Co-defendant, Idriz Balaj was also found not guilty. “Based on the statute, factual conclusions and witnesses, the majority of the body sets you not guilty,” the Presiding judge read before the court. However, Lahi Brahimaj was sentenced to six years imprisonment. The trial of Haradinaj had been closely monitored in Kosovo. Ahmet Isufi, the Deputy Leader of AAK...

Forget about status negotiations for a moment. The near-term outlook for Kosovo is unalterably grim: an economy stuck in misery; a bursting population of young people with “criminality as the sole career choice;” an insupportably high birthrate; a society imbued with corruption and a state dominated by organized crime figures. These are the conclusions of “Operationalizing of the Security Sector Reform in the Western Balkans,” a 124-page investigation by the Institute for European Policy commissioned by the German Bundeswehr and issued last January. This month the text turned up on a weblog. It is labeled “solely for internal use.” Provided...

THE HAGUE -- The trial of three former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commanders continued Thursday. The trial of Ramush Haradinaj, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj continued with the testimony of an elderly Albanian man, who gave his evidence as Witness 8, with image and voice distortion. According to the allegations in the prosecution’s pre-trial brief, Witness 8 gave evidence about an incident on 20 July 1998, when two Albanians were taken off a bus between Đakovica and Priština and subsequently killed. In his 15-minute long testimony, the witness confirmed he was from the Đakovica area and he was present on...

Concern within the UN has been growing over anticipated trouble in Kosovo's 'final status' talks. The threat of inter-ethnic violence has been growing with the recent allegations of Ramush Haradinaj (ex-PM indicted on war crimes) support for a new rebel group called the "Kosovo Independence Army" (UPK) who have sprouted up searching cars in the lawless regions of the province. The international body has already ruled out partition along ethnic lines, union with Albania, and autonomy under Serbian rule. This effectively leaves one option only: conditional independence with international peacekeepers enforcing the province's status. Both parties will most likely object...

Hague court grants Kosovo ex-PM provisional release 06 Jun 2005 15:34:30 GMT AMSTERDAM, June 6 (Reuters) - The U.N. tribunal in The Hague said on Monday it had decided to provisionally release former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj pending his war crimes trial. Haradinaj is the most senior former Kosovo guerrilla to be indicted by the tribunal for alleged atrocities in the 1998-99 separatist war against Serb forces. He is considered a hero by many Kosovo Albanians. A former regional commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Haradinaj surrendered to the U.N. tribunal in March, winning praise for his prompt compliance...

PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - A young brother of former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj was shot dead on Friday, his third brother to die violently since 1997. A source in the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force told Reuters that Enver Haradinaj, a student, was killed in an apparent clan dispute. "It is not politically motivated," the KFOR source said. Officials in the United Nations-administered protectorate issued an appeal to the public for calm. The shooting occurred between the villages of Raushiq and Lubenic in western Kosovo, the Haradinaj homeland in a region known for long-standing Albanian blood feuds. Ramush...

The UN in Kosovo praises potential war criminal - why?    PressInfo # 208  March 10, 2005 By Jan Oberg, TFF director   Danish diplomat, Søren Jessen-Petersen is the highest authority in Kosovo and SRSG, Special Representative of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, there. In spite of that, his unconditional embrace of Mr. Ramush Haradinaj, a former leader of the illegal Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and former prime minister in the non-independent Kosovo and now indicted for war crimes by the Hague Tribunal seems to raise no eyebrows in any capital, media or at the UN in New York. All...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj faces charges of murder, rape and the deportation of Serb civilians from his time as a leader of ethnic Albanian rebels, the U.N. tribunal says. The war crimes indictment against Haradinaj, who resigned on Tuesday to face trial, was kept under wraps until he was taken into custody after flying to The Hague from Kosovo on Wednesday. Prosecutors have charged Haradinaj, a former regional commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with 17 counts of crimes against humanity and 20 counts of violations of the laws or customs of war during...

PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - Kosovo's ethnic Albanian prime minister has been charged with war crimes by the United Nations tribunal and will resign his post Tuesday to answer accusations in The Hague, a senior government source said. Rumours that Ramush Haradinaj was about to be charged by Hague chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte had circulated since before he became prime minister last December, raising fears of violence if NATO peacekeepers were forced to arrest him. "Yes, the Prime Minister has been informed he has an indictment," a senior official in the Kosovo government told Reuters. "We have to...

PARIS - The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia is about to confirm charges against Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj and issue a warrant for his arrest, Le Monde newspaper said on Monday. Haradinaj’s senior political adviser said the prime minister had received no indication from the tribunal that he was about to be indicted. “We’ve received nothing. There’s nothing new,” said Ardian Gjini. Haradinaj has said he is confident the probe against him will come to nothing but has indicated a number of times he would surrender if charged. The French daily Le Monde quoted a judicial source in...

  Ramush Haradinaj RegionHague Tribunal indicts RegionHague Tribunal indicts HaradinajPristina, 11:15The United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has indicted Kosovo's Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj for alleged war crimes committed during the armed conflict in Kosovo, Belgrade's news agency Fonet said, adding that Haradinaj will be heading to Hague by the end of March. The source says the information has been already confirmed by UNMIK's Justice Department in Pristina. "Haradinaj will resign by mid-March," Fonet news agency quotes a judge in the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), who spoke on condition of anonymity. The judge added that the United...

Investigation: Kosovo’s Wild WestVigilante law reigns in a part of Kosovo where justice doesn’t quite reach.Ramiz Muriqi, a tall man in his fifties, looks scared and isolated in his flat in Peja, about 80 kilometres west of Kosovo’s capital Pristina.“I’m tired of watching my back all the time, worrying that I’m next in line to be shot,” said Muriqi, with two cell phones, an automatic pistol and two spare magazines hanging from his belt.Peja - known to Serbs as Pec - is a large town in the Dukagjini plain of western Kosovo. In this region, law and order has broken...

The possibly imminent indictment for war crimes of Kosovo's prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj, threatens to provoke a new crisis in the breakaway Serbian province that was invaded by British and other forces in 1999 and remains under uneasy UN and Nato control. Mr Haradinaj, who took office last month, is a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The Serbian government accuses him of complicity in atrocities committed in the Decani region of western Kosovo in 1998-99. Belgrade has issued an arrest warrant and is refusing to deal with Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority leadership while he remains in power. The...

A prime minister who is accused of involvement in war crimes. RAMUSH HARADINAJ is, at just 36, Europe's youngest prime minister. He may also be its most controversial. That is hard to credit, as he sits calmly in his spacious office in Kosovo's capital, Pristina. His neatly pressed blue shirt, red silk tie and buffed brogues are in stark contrast to the mud-spattered camouflage he wore six years ago, when he was a senior commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army, which fought a vicious war against the troops of Yugoslavia's (and Serbia's) former president, Slobodan Milosevic. It is Mr Haradinaj's...

  Talk of Haradinaj Indictment Unnerves Kosovo  If the Hague tribunal indicts the former KLA commander, violence may erupt in his western Kosovo heartland.By Zana Limani and Muhamet Hajrullahu in Decani, and Jeta Xharra in London (BCR No 533, 16-Dec-04) The situation in western Kosovo is increasingly fragile two weeks ahead of the December 31 deadline for the Hague tribunal to issue the final war crimes indictments in the former Yugoslavia. Many people interviewed by IWPR in the Decani region, home to Ramush Haradinaj, the new prime minister of Kosovo, are predicting major unrest if he is indicted in the...

TERRORIST RAMUSH HARADINAJ NEW PRIME MINISTER OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA

December 6, 2004 U.N.-APPROVED TERRORIST TO RUN KOSOVOby Srdja Trifkovic Imagine a "multi-ethnic" Palestine, administered by the United Nations, in which a Hamas leader notorious for terrorist attacks on Jewish civilians is certified as the Authority's "democratically" elected chief executive. Imagine Abu Musab al-Zarqawi being approved by a future UN governor as Iraq's prime minister. Imagine that in Kosovo a KLA murderer . . . but then in Kosovo you don't have to imagine anything. On December 3 the provincial parliament in Pristina voted to elect Ramush Haradinaj as prime minister. This 36-year-old former commander of the "Kosovo Liberation...