(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) The Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, as the new Kosovo war crimes court will be called, is still awaiting final approval from MPs in the Netherlands, where it will be based, and for its funding from the EU to arrive before it can start work, BIRN has learned.
The Kosovo and Netherlands governments signed an agreement in January which enabled the court’s chambers and prosecutor’s office to be located in The Hague. But before it starts work, the court needs to be ratified by Dutch MPs and it is still not clear when the issue will be on the Dutch parliament’s agenda, although the EU expects it to be approved by the end of 2016. The Dutch parliament did not respond to requests for clarification. The court will try Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA fighters for crimes allegedly committed from 1998 to 2000. Sources close to the court told BIRN that the first indictments can be expected at the end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017. The court will be staffed by international judges and prosecutors, although it will operate under Kosovo’s laws. It will be based in the former Europol building in The Hague, which according to BIRN’s sources is currently being modified so that it can hold court hearings. The EU office in Kosovo told BIRN that “intensive preparations are ongoing” for the adoption of a budget for the court. “It is expected that this will be completed in the first half of 2016,” the EU office said. The budget is to be funded by the EU and countries including the US, but the overall amount has not been confirmed so far. Many believe that top Kosovo politicians will end up in the dock, including President Hashim Thaci, the former political chief of the KLA. A 2011 report from the Council of Europe levelled serious allegations of criminality against Thaci, which he strongly denied. But Kosovo’s law which enabled the establishment of the new court makes it clear that no official is out of bounds for prosecution. “The official position of any accused person, including the head of state or government or a responsible government official, shall not relieve such person of criminal responsibility nor mitigate punishment,” it says. The court was established after the EU’s Special Investigative Task Force conducted a three-year investigation into the allegations in the Council of Europe report that KLA members committed a series of crimes between 1998 and 2000. The report by Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty claimed that these crimes included kidnapping, torture and organ-harvesting. As a result of the investigation, the EU task force said it was in a position to indict high-level perpetrators as soon as the new court starts operating. Since then the EU and the US have been pushing the Kosovo government to adopt the necessary constitutional amendments and laws. They believe the court is needed because the Kosovo judiciary would be unable or unwilling to properly prosecute high-ranking former KLA figures, and the EU’s rule-of-law mission, EULEX, does not have the capacity to do so. However the new court is widely seen in Kosovo as an insult to the Kosovo Liberation Army and its war for freedom from Serbian rule. The court will address allegations that KLA fighters were involved in the killings, abductions, illegal detentions and persecution of Serbs, Roma and Kosovo Albanians believed to be collaborators with the Serbian regime or political opponents of the KLA leadership during and after the 1998-99 conflict. It will consist of the two main institutions - the chamber and the registry. The chamber will include a basic court chamber, court of appeals chamber, supreme court chamber and constitutional court chamber. All judging panels at all court levels will be composed of three international judges. The registry will include a defence office, victims’ participation office to represent victims’ interests, a witness protection and support office, a detention management unit and an ombudsman’s office. The official languages of the court will be Albanian, Serbian and English. The specialist prosecution office will be independent and it is expected that the lead prosecutor of the EU’s Special Investigative Task Force, David Schwendiman, will take over once it is established. The prosecution will also have its own police officers with the authority to exercise any of the powers that Kosovo’s police have.