Socialist Party MP Taulant Balla sharply criticized the request by the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office for 45-year prison terms for each of the former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), totaling 180 years for the four top officials.
Balla stated that on Monday in The Hague, as closing arguments began in the trial of Hashim Thaçi and others, shameful accusations filled with fabrications were leveled against the Albanian people, aimed at defaming the KLA’s liberation struggle.
In response, he called on citizens to join a protest on February 17 under the motto “Justice, not politics”, to be held at Skanderbeg Square in Pristina—coinciding with Kosovo’s 18th Independence Day anniversary.
“Yesterday in The Hague, a shameful accusation was unleashed against the Albanian people, entirely filled with falsehoods with the sole aim of tarnishing the KLA’s liberation war. Ironically, the same prosecutor previously sought much lower sentences for the occupying perpetrators, responsible for 12,000 lives taken, 20,000 women and girls raped, and 1,600 others killed or missing—officially categorized as disappeared under Hague bureaucracy. That is why no one should miss the protest on February 17 in Pristina. We must all be there,” Balla wrote.
