Kosovo president uses Holocaust to slam international court
Hashim Thaci says setting up tribunal to investigate Kosovar war crimes similar to prosecuting Jews who were persecuted by Nazis
PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo’s president on Wednesday called an international war crimes court with jurisdiction over potential Kosovar suspects a “historical injustice,” adding his government only reluctantly accepted it as the “price for its liberty.”
In an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the 10th anniversary of Kosovo declaring independence from Serbia, Hashim Thaci slammed the court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, as akin to creating a court to judge Jews who were persecuted by the Nazis in World War II.
“Kosovo held a defensive war for its existence as a nation and attacked no one,” he said. “We have nothing to hide.”
Kosovo’s bloody war for independence ended with a 78-day NATO air campaign in June 1999, which stopped a bloody Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists. The war left 13,000 dead and 20,000 Albanian women raped, according to Thaci.
Under US and European pressure, Kosovo’s government agreed in 2015 to set up the Kosovo war crimes court, known as the Special Chambers, to confront allegations that fighters with the Kosovo Liberation Army committed war crimes against ethnic Serbs from 1998 to 2000. The court, which has jurisdiction over Kosovo citizens, has yet to hear any cases.
US Ambassador to Kosovo Greg Delawie said Wednesday the court was meant to provide justice to the victims.
“The special court is not about whether the Kosovo Liberation Army struggle was right or not, if the KLA was good or was bad. It is about crimes committed by individual people against other individual people and the victims were all ethnic groups,” he told the AP.
Thaci said war crimes by the Serb army, paramilitary and police have remained uninvestigated.
Some Kosovar lawmakers tried last year to amend the law and extend the court’s jurisdiction over Serbs, their former adversaries in the war, but they appear to have stopped the efforts since.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, recognized by 115 nations but not by Serbia.
