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Former Kosovo leader heads for Hague to
face charges |
The Associated Press
Thursday, March 10, 2005
| PRISTINA, Kosovo Kosovo's former prime
minister flew out of the province Wednesday to face war crimes
charges at a UN-run court in The Hague for his alleged part in
atrocities during the 1998-99 war between ethnic Albanians and Serb
forces.
Ramush Haradinaj, 36, boarded a special flight from
Pristina's airport a day after resigning as the province's prime
minister following an indictment by the war crimes court.
Neither Haradinaj, a former commander of the ethnic Albanian
Kosovo Liberation Army, nor court officials gave any details of the
specific charges against him.
Serbian officials accuse him
of command responsibility in the alleged killing of Serb civilians
by the rebel Kosovo forces in 1998 close to his home village of
Glodjanje. They also spoke of the rape of several Roma women and the
killing of some Roma men - all part of a Gypsy wedding party - by
his forces shortly after the war near the town of Djakovica.
Haradinaj has said he is innocent of the
charges.
Several hundred people were at the airport to see
Haradinaj depart. Two other ethnic Albanian former rebels also
accused by the court were to travel with him.
Faik Doda, 39,
who traveled from western Kosovo despite freezing weather to see
Haradinaj leave, voiced anger at the tribunal's decision to indict a
man he sees as his hero.
"If the Kosovo Liberation Army was
criminal then why did NATO support them?" he asked.
The rebel
army was seen as an ally to the alliance during North Atlantic
Treaty Organization airstrikes, which ended a Serb crackdown on
ethnic Albanian separatists in the province in
1999.
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