Haradinaj Retrial Under Way
Defence rubbishes prosecution methods as case against former Kosovo prime minister begins.
Haradinaj Retrial Under Way
Defence rubbishes prosecution methods as case against former Kosovo prime minister begins.
As the first retrial in the history of the Hague tribunal got under way this week, lawyers for Ramush Haradinaj, one-time military commander and former prime minister of Kosovo, lambasted the prosecution’s methods and claimed a “shoddy” retrial was being mounted at the expense of the accused.
“The case [is] limpingly and appallingly put together,” Ben Emmerson, who represents Haradinaj, said during opening statements on August 19.
He said both the original case and the current one were based “primarily” on an investigation conducted by Serbian intelligence officials, who he said were known to engage in the “basest methods of evidence manipulation”.
Emmerson further alleged that Carla Del Ponte, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor at the time of the original 2005 indictment, was advised that there was “no sustainable case” against Haradinaj, but went ahead with it anyway.
“When the case was put up for examination at trial it predictably fell into pieces,” Emmerson said, noting that the defence had not even bothered to bring its own witnesses to testify.
In 2008, Haradinaj, a former commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, was acquitted of all 37 counts against him, which included the murder, torture and rape of Serb civilians as well as of suspected Albanian and Roma collaborators during the late Nineties conflict in Kosovo.
One of his co-accused, Idriz Balaj, was acquitted at the same time, while a third co-accused, Lahi Brahimaj, was found guilty of cruel treatment and torture and sentenced to six years in prison.
Prosecutors appealed against the acquittals, claiming that the trial had been “infected” by witness intimidation. As a result of this, they said, they were unable to secure the testimony of two key witnesses.
One of these, Shefqet Kabashi, was charged with contempt of court in 2007 for refusing to answer questions when he was called to testify during the original trial.
Kabashi has since lived in the United States, but was arrested by Dutch officials this week after travelling to the Netherlands in what his lawyer said was a voluntary trip.
Kabashi made his initial appearance on the contempt charges on August 18, and is due to once again appear as a witness in the Haradinaj case on August 22. Whether or not he will agree to answer questions remains unclear.
The decision to hold a retrial stems from the July 2010 appeals judgement in the original case, in which the judges ruled that Haradinaj and Balaj should be retried on six counts of murder, cruel treatment and torture, and Brahimaj retried on four of those counts.
The appeals chamber found that the trial judges “failed to appreciate the gravity of the threat of witness intimidation posed to the trial’s integrity” and placed too much emphasis “on ensuring that the prosecution took no more than its pre-allotted time to present its case… irrespective of the possibility of securing potentially important testimony”.
This week, Emmerson maintained that “despite some rumours and labels, there is no suggestion that Mr Haradinaj was ever responsible for intimidating witnesses, directly or indirectly”.
“Notwithstanding that fact, a view has gained currency that the original trial was flawed by intimidation,” he said, adding that there are many reasons why a witness may not wish to testify, one being that they are “genuinely afraid of telling the truth”.
One of the witnesses who refused to testify the first time around, known as Witness X, “will be exposed as a liar and perjurer” if he ends up testifying during the retrial, Emmerson said.
A new prosecution witness, known only as number 81, is being brought to corroborate the account of another witness, Emmerson said, but 81’s statement is “riddled with inconsistencies” and he has already found not to be credible at a trial held in Kosovo.
The prosecution’s view of its case is quite different. In his opening statement, prosecuting lawyer Paul Rogers argued that Haradinaj and his two co-defendants participated in the “brutal elimination” of civilians who were, or were perceived to be, Serbian collaborators, regardless of their ethnicity.
All the counts in the retrial concern a KLA compound in Jablanica, which prosecutors say was used as a detention facility.
In one instance in May 1998, Rogers said, three young men – one Serb and two Roma Egyptians – were arrested by KLA soldiers and taken to Jablanica, where Balaj – one of the co-defendants – allegedly sliced off the ear of one of the men. Haradinaj was allegedly nearby in the “kitchen area” of the compound and Brahimaj “joined in the beatings” Rogers said. The three men’s bodies have never been recovered.
Rogers admitted that there were “internal differences” between witness accounts of the events. In another instance in July 1998, Rogers said a man was abducted by KLA members and brought to the Jablanica headquarters where he was beaten with a baseball bat.
“The victim said it was Haradinaj who controlled the beating,” Rogers said. “Haradinaj grabbed his hair, spat in his face and called him a traitor.”
Haradinaj, who became prime minister of Kosovo in 2004, stepped down after 100 days in office to face charges in The Hague.
The retrial continues on August 22.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
