Kosovo's former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj will be released conditionally pending his trial on rape and other atrocities during the 1998-99 conflict in the mainly ethnic Albanian Serbian province, a spokeswoman for the UN war crimes tribunal said Tuesday.
Florence Hartmann said prosecutor Carla Del Ponte had decided not to appeal a decision by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Monday to grant Haradinaj conditional release. One of the measures imposed by the court is that Haradinaj not engage in politics.
Haradinaj, 35, turned himself in to the ICTY in March after resigning as Kosovo prime minister following his indictment by the tribunal.
The ethnic Albanian is among the most important political figures facing charges before the tribunal along with former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic.
In addition to rape, Haradinaj is accused of murder, persecution and cruel treatment of Serbian, Albanian and Roma civilians in Kosovo as a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, an ethnic Albanian guerrilla movement, at the time.
Prosecutors allege that he supervised a systematic campaign aimed at taking control of several towns in western Kosovo including Pec, Decani and Djakovica in order to chase out Serbian villagers between March and September 1998.
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3 comments:
This is outrageous and reflects the biased approach of the drumhead military court at the Hague. Milosevic cannot be provisionally released but this fellow can. Any semblance of legality in those proceedings conducted by a vindictive prosecutor and biased judges shocks the conscience.
We all know who Milosevic is, now unless you want to be free back there in Serbia you will be happy that monster is behind bars.
#1
Can your tiny brain process the fact that Milosevic does not recognise the International Tribunal and did not go there willingly to face international justice.
A strong link between Milosevic and genocide has just been established. Would you want that monster to walk freely after the latest video showing what happened in Srebrenica 10 years ago. I was personally held hostage by the same group "Scorpions" and was told "If you don't have a lot of money you will say hello to the men from Srebrenica". This happened to me in Kosova on May the 1st, 1999, 10km outside of Prishtina.
There is justice in this world, and I thank the International Community for that.
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