UN court acquits key Kosovo former KLA leader
ISN SECURITY WATCH ( 02/12/05) - The UN court has acquitted two former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UCK) members of war crimes against Serb and Albanian civilians during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war.
A third former KLA member was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
The prosecution at the UN’s Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) had accused Fatmir Limaj, Isak Musliu, and Haradin Bala of torturing some 35 Serb and Albanian civilians suspected of collaborating with Serb forces and killing 11 of them.
Limaj and Musliu were found not guilty on Wednesday, while co-defendant Bala was convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He was the first Kosovo Albanian to be found guilty by the UN court.
Limaj and Musliu were released from the Tribunal’s detention unit in The Hague and returned to Kosovo on Wednesday.
“The Tribunal found Fatmir Limaj and Isak Musliu not guilty of all the charges contained in the indictment against them regarding their alleged involvement in crimes committed in the Lapusnik area of Kosovo and at the Lapusnik prison camp in 1998,” the trial chamber of the UN court said in a Wednesday statement.
In the same ruling, judges found Bala guilty of torture, cruel treatment, and murder.
“This relates to the mistreatment of three prisoners at the Lapusnik prison camp; his personal role in the maintenance and enforcement of the inhumane conditions of the camp; aiding the torture of one prisoner; and participation in the murder of nine prisoners from the camp who were marched to the Berisa Mountains on 25 or 26 July 1998 and murdered,” the ICTY statement said.
The indictment had alleged that Limaj was a KLA commander responsible for the Lapusnik area and the prison camp of the same name; that Musliu was a KLA commander and at times acted as a guard at the prison camp; and that Bala was also a KLA commander and guard at the prison camp.
Since the opening of proceedings in November 2004, several ex-KLA fighters, international observers, former detainees, and their relatives have testified about the existence of the camp, the vicious treatment of inmates, and the key roles allegedly played by the three accused.
However, the UN court said the prosecution had failed to link Limaj directly to beatings, inhumane treatment, torture, and murder.
Most prisoners were “detained in either a very small basement storage room or another very small room used as a cow shed”, the judge said. They were chained to the wall and unable to move.
The camp was abandoned during an assault by Serbian forces and about 20 detainees were taken to the nearby mountains.
Limaj was one of the most senior members of the KLA, which fought against Serb forces during the 1998-1999 was.
After the war, he turned to politics and was a member of the chairmanship of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), comprised largely of former KLA members. He was also an elected member of the Kosovo parliament.
Kosovo Albanians close to the former KLA and the PDK welcomed the not-guilty verdicts. In some Kosovo towns, gunshots ware heard during the celebration in the streets following the ICTY’s acquittal of Limaj and Musliu.
Jakup Krasniqi, a key KLA figure and the current PDK secretary general, praised the court’s ruling as “victory for the entire Albanian people”.
“We welcome the ICTY decision to release Limaj and Musliu, and we hope that Haradin Bala too will soon be with his family,” Krasniqi told local media.
Just two days before the verdict, Krasniqi had spoken to thousands of protesters gathered in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, calling for the release of the three and charging that the trials against KLA members were “politically motivated”. He has also accused the UN court of “injustice against the war of Albanian people” against the Serb forces.
Kosovo Albanian President Ibrahim Rugova called the acquittals victories for justice. “The court’s decision justifies the liberation struggle of Kosovo Albanians against Serbian occupation,” Rugova told reporters.
But while Kosovo Albanians were celebrating with gunshots and fireworks, their ethnic Serb co-nationals expressed shock and consternation.
Slavisa Petkovic, the only Serb who accepted a ministerial post in Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi’s government, called the ICTY scandalous, arguing that the UN court’s verdict would only encourage Kosovo Albanians to use violence against Serbs to achieve the goal of independence.
The trial against Limaj, Musliu, and Bala was one of two cases against former KLA fighters in the UN court.
Former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, wartime commander of the western operational zone of the KLA, is also charged, together with two others, by the ICTY with crimes against the Serb civilian population and members of the Albanian and Roma civilian population in western Kosovo in 1998.
Haradinaj is the most senior former Kosovo guerrilla to be indicted by the tribunal for alleged atrocities in the 1998-1999 war. Following the indictment, he resigned from the government and surrendered to the tribunal in March.
Haradinaj, who faces charges of murder, rape, and the deportation of Serb civilians during his time as a leader of ethnic Albanian rebels, has denied the charges.
He was granted provisional release in June and returned in Kosovo pending the beginning of the trial, scheduled for early 2006.
(By Ekrem Krasniqi in Brussels)
