PRISTINA – Prosecutors are in search of to prohibit visits to 3 former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders who’re on trial in The Hague for war crimes as a result of they allegedly tried to manipulate witnesses and leak confidential testimony.
Former Kosovo president Hashim Thaci, Parliament ex-speaker Kadri Veseli and previous lawmaker Rexhep Selimi had been all best leaders of the KLA which waged Kosovo’s 1998-99 war for independence from Serbia and are now on trial in the Hague.
A record observed through the Associated Press on Thursday confirmed that prosecutors from the Kosovo Specialist Chambers – a department of the Kosovo felony machine that used to be arrange at The Hague partially due to fears about witness security and safety – had discovered that people visiting the 3 defendants had later approached safe witnesses “attempting to prevent or influence their testimony.”
Prosecutors have requested that every one visits be limited apart from the ones from members of the family which shall be recorded. They’re additionally in search of to prohibit telephone calls and written communique and that the defendants be segregated from different inmates.
The restrictions are vital to save you any makes an attempt to intervene with witnesses, impede or leak their testimony and “further threats to the integrity of the proceedings,” in accordance to the prosecutors.
The 3 defendants were in custody since November 2020. Charges towards them come with homicide, torture and persecution allegedly dedicated throughout Kosovo and northerly Albania from 1998 to September 1999, throughout and after the war.
The courtroom in The Hague used to be arrange after a 2011 Council of Europe document that alleged KLA combatants trafficked human organs taken from prisoners in addition to useless Serbs and fellow ethnic Albanians. The organ harvesting allegations weren’t incorporated within the indictment towards Thaci.
Most of the 13,000 individuals who died within the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo had been ethnic Albanians. A 78-day marketing campaign of NATO air moves towards Serbian forces ended the combating. About 1 million ethnic Albanian Kosovars had been pushed from their houses.
Serbia does now not acknowledge Kosovo’s 2008 independence.
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Semini reported from Tirana, Albania