UNMIK ON AIR

24 July 2003

REMI CASE – JUSTICE IN KOSOVO

By Sputnik KILAMBI & Zoran CULAFIC

Hello and welcome to unmik on air with Sputnik Kilambi and Martin Redi

Last week’s verdict against Rustem Mustafa known as Commander Remi and three other senior former KLA officers was the first time KLA members were convicted of war crimes in Kosovo.

A panel of international judges handed down a total of 45 years to the four men, including a 17-year jail sentence for Commander Remi for ordering the torture and murder of five Kosovo Albanians suspected of collaborating with Serb officials during the war. They were also accused of illegally detaining and torturing a Kosovo Serb who testified against them and for crimes committed against Kosovar Albanians in the Llap/Lap region of northern Kosovo.

The verdict sparked protests in Podujevo, hometown of the 4 men. A grenade attack against the Podujevo police station a day after the verdict was followed by explosions in Prishtina. Defence attorneys for the 4 slammed the verdict as unjust and vowed to appeal.

Significantly, major political parties like President Rugova’s LDK and former KLA political leader Thaci’s PDK reacted in a very restrained manner, stressing it was up to the judiciary to deal with such cases. In contrast, Kosovo’s third main political grouping, Ramush Haradinaj’s AAK said the verdict proved the politicization of UNMIK courts.

The verdict was welcomed by the international community, which praised the trial as fair and based on hard evidence. Neeraj Singh, UNMIK’s Justice Department spokesmanHe dismisses charges of double standards, or that these men were given higher sentences than they should have been given.

CUT 1 Tr 2 - What we have seen are some isolated acts of criminal attacks on police and justice targets. That obviously is coming from a small group of people who do not represent the larger masses of Kosovo. So the public response I think is in favor of a fair justice system we have established here.

LINK: The problem is that ex KLA fighters are considered to be war heroes in Kosovo and the struggle they waged as part of the freedom movement – hardly surprising then that the verdict sparked such strong reactions here. Nonetheless, argues Behxhet Shala, executive director of the Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms, despite the fact that the 1999 war was a war of liberation, public opinion must accept that anyone who committed a crime is accountable, no matter what his rank or which ethnic group he belongs to.

In fact, stresses Shala, the higher the position, the greater the responsibility

CUT 2 Tr. 17 – Absolutely, if it is proved that somebody has helped a crime to be committed or has not prevented crimes against civilians, then they cannot avoid responsibility and they will face justice. A crime does not have an ethnic affiliation. Everybody who has committed crimes should be responsible, no matter what position they occupied, or regardless whether they were Albanians, Serbs or others.

LINK: Another problem, not only in Kosovo but also in Serbia and other former Yugoslavian countries, is that each side is trying to downplay crimes committed by members of their own community. The media in both Pristina and Belgrade add to this by inviting public opinion to support the idea of suspected or convicted criminals being heroes – Mladic in Serbia for example, or commander Remi in Kosovo. The model is the same.

Serbian officials have so far remained tightlipped about the verdict, though Belgrade has long pushed for both The Hague Tribunal and UNMIK prosecutors to indict former KLA leaders on war crimes charges. Vladimir Bozovic is with the Belgrade Coordination center for Kosovo.

Vladimir Bozovic: I think it’s of utmost importance that indictments are issued against Albanian political and military leaders, former KLA commanders, who have now entered political life. Against their subordinates too, who followed their orders, and finally against those who actually executed the orders.

But Serbia too has much to do in order to clean up its act, argues Bedzet Shala. Serbs, he says, have never clearly distanced themselves from what happened in Kosovo, as well as in Bosnia and Croatia.

Bedzet Shala: Albanians were in a different position; they did not fight an oppressive war, with a genocidal character, but simply a defensive war, and a war that was imposed on us.... but again if it is proved that amongst Albanians there are people who committed crimes against civilians, which are protected by all international conventions for war crimes, then they need to face justice and people should not support them and should distance themselves from them. Since you cannot ask for the prosecution of criminals of another nationality, while at the same time you try to protect criminals at home.

International judges have a huge responsibility today, adds Shala, but K-Albanians have responsibilities too - those who have knowledge about a crime, but who prefer to remain silent.

And it appears that a growing number of K Albanians distinguish between standing by the KLA and its struggle and condoning war crimes against civilians. Fadilj Lepaja is a prominent PDK official and heads Balkans Institute in Pristina.

Fadilj Lepaja: No one would criminalize the war led by the KLA. That army was an ally to the biggest military alliance in the world. If someone individually committed a crime, he should be punished. The issue of war crimes is not political, it is a legal issue, and those who committed crimes should be brought to court. Not a national court, but an international one, because such crimes are punishable by international laws.

The current storm over the Remi trial will probably die down as people grapple with day-to-day problems. International judges meanwhile will continue to function according to the terms of their mandate - what people forget though, says UNMIK”s Neeraj Singh, is that local judges do in fact handle a substantial number of cases.

Neeraj Singh: The local judiciary is in fact handling 100 percent of civil cases, they are handling more than 90 percent of criminal cases, so its only a small number of cases where there is a possibility of not having a very fair trial within the local system that we have the international judiciary coming and because these are cases which are more spectacular, in the attention of the media and the public, it appears that everything is being handled by the international judiciary but that is not a fact.

And that comment brings us to an end of this edition of UNMIK ON AIR. Thanks for listening.