Kosovo Ombudsperson Naim Qelaj, reporting today to the Committee on Human Rights, Gender Equality and Petitions, stated that the Specialist Chambers in The Hague had failed to guarantee and uphold fair trial standards in the case of the four former KLA leaders.
According to Qelaj, the court’s actions amounted to human rights violations. He stressed that when a country’s Ombudsperson makes such a statement, it must be based on an analysis and assessment of the entire situation.
“I believe that the Specialist Chambers in The Hague have failed to guarantee compliance with fair trial standards. In doing so, they have violated human rights. And when a country’s Ombudsperson states this fact, they cannot do so without an analysis and an assessment of the entire situation. Whether the Ombudsperson has the authority to do so is entirely irrelevant compared with the findings I have made, to which we have still not received any response. Apart from the visual performances by the President of the Specialist Chambers, who has shown us how good this court is and how it respects human rights standards, I have received no explanation from this court on the issues I have been raising for years,” Qelaj said.
He said that whenever he had raised concerns about human rights violations affecting the former KLA leaders detained in The Hague, he had been told that he had “no mandate.” He described this as dishonest and said he had also conveyed this message to the President of the Specialist Chambers, Ekaterina Trendafilova.
Qelaj also said that the response from international actors had been particularly concerning. He argued that repeated calls to “not interfere with justice” had been made deliberately to prevent transparency about what had taken place.
“Every time I have spoken out, I have been told that I ‘have no mandate.’ To me, this was dishonest and disrespectful, and I told her so during the meeting I had in my office on May 13, at her request. No one can come to an institution in Kosovo, invoke their authority as a Kosovo institution, and dictate the boundaries and limits of how far oversight and monitoring of human rights compliance can go. Anyone working in the field of human rights knows that these rights are universal. What concerned me even more was the reaction of international actors. They either failed to understand this fact or did not want to understand it. Instead, they repeatedly called for non-interference in justice, although I have never interfered with justice. It seems that all these calls to ‘not interfere with justice’ were deliberately made to prevent transparency regarding what happened,” he said.
On September 16, the Specialist Chambers in The Hague sentenced the four former KLA leaders to a combined total of 81 years in prison: Hashim Thaçi (25 years), Kadri Veseli (18 years), Jakup Krasniqi (25 years) and Rexhep Selimi (13 years).
On September 28, the Kosovo Assembly adopted a declaration rejecting what it described as an unjust judgment against the former KLA leaders.
On October 14, the Government of Kosovo decided to establish a Working Group tasked with drafting and harmonising the State Strategy concerning appeal proceedings before the Specialist Chambers in The Hague.
