By Dr. Agim LEKA/ New York

This writing is divided into four headings. The first heading is the republication of an article on the same subject printed in Illyria in 2005,the second part is an addendum to the 2005 article to bring the events of the narrative up to date. The third one is the Hague verdict of the 2d trial, the fourth heading is the conclusion touching on  the saga of Ramush Haradinaj and its aftermath.

HEADING No: ONE

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN ILLYRIA AS PART OF A SERIES OF THIRTEEN PARTS  UNDER THE TITLE OF “KOSOVA: A LAND OF AGONIZING HISTORY (and other ordeals of the dismembered Albanian Nation)”.THE STUDY WAS LATER EXPANDED AND WAS SUBDIVIDED IN TWENTY-TWO PARTS.

PART  ONE APPEARED ON  THE ISSUE  #1451 0N JUNE 7-9,  2005 . THE REMAINING TWELVE PARTS CONTINUED THEREAFTER ON THE FOLLOWING SUBSEQUENT ISSUES.

EXCERPTS FROM ILLYRIA ( PART III ) ( 2005 PUBLICATION)

The following interview with Mihajlo Mihajlov, vividly emphasizes the sinister goals  and policies of the present  Serbian leadership in undermining any hope of stability in the nascent Kosovar independent state.

{Note from the writer on August 1, 2013}: “  The Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov nominated Mr. Mihajlov for the Nobel Peace Prize. His work was cited by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago.”

PART III

INTERVIEW WITH MIHAJLO MIHAJLOV: Kostunica versus Haradinaj

The journalist Marijana Milosavjelic of the weekly magazine NIN ( # 2816, Dec. 16, 2004, page 14)), posed the following question to Mihajlo Mihajlov: “Why the West considers Mr. Kostunica, the Prime Minister of Serbia as a bigger problem than Mr. Haradinaj,  the Prime Minister of Kosovo?

Mihajlo Mihajlov: “The main reason is not an anti-Serbian conspiracy or a different judgment process of verifying the crime.  One must also consider that Mr. Haradinaj has not as yet been indicted at the Hague Tribunal. He has already declared that should he be indicted, he would go there at once.

On the other hand, people already indicted by the Hague Court, for many years now, freely roam around Serbia. Prime Minister Kostunica has no intention of delivering them to the Hague Tribunal. That is a serious blemish for Kostunica.

Second, the numerous warrants that have been raised by Belgrade authorities for arresting  Haradinaj, may or may not be justified. I have no way of judging them.

I know exactly what happened, a  few years ago, when the predecessor of Mr. Haradinaj, Dr. Bajram Rexhepi was elected Prime Minister of Kosova. The Belgrade Press immediately accused him of being a war criminal on the basis that he had been a participant in the Kosova Liberation Army in the conflict { against Milosevic’s Serbia}.

The main argument for accusing Dr. Rexhepi as a war criminal was the discovery of an amputated head of  a Serbian national in the operating zone of Dr. Rexhepi’s unit. The Serbian medical establishment in Prishtina concluded that the head had been amputated with extremely precise surgical skill. This was assumed to be proof that the decapitation had been performed by Dr. Rexhepi, who happened to have been a surgeon.

I remember the sarcasm with which the World’s  Press greeted such “evidences.”

After all this, it is logical to assume that Kostunica may be considered to be more of an odious person than Haradinaj, in the World’ s public opinion”.

{Note from the writer: I have taken the liberty to improve the English translation of the above interview  and  cite the correct  name of the first Prime Minister of Kosova.  The essence of the original translation  by  Tanja B. Loncar, remains intact}.

On March 8, immediately after the UN  War crimes tribunal confirmed the indictment against Haradinaj, he resigned his post as prime minister of Kosova. As he had promised, he departed for the Hague to face the charges, which he denies.

The late Robin Cook, Great Britain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs during the Kosova war, wrote on March 13, 2005 (Dawn, the Internet Edition) under the title  “An act of real courage:”  “ I had a number of contacts with the Kosova Liberation Army  before and during the NATO intervention to halt the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovans. Its fighters demonstrated real courage in taking on the formidable Serb military machine with no artillery, armour or air coverage to match their opponents. But they were as ruthless as any other guerrilla force in history, and it would be naïve to imagine that in the middle of the vicious ethnic cleansing by Slobodan Milosevic they made a neat distinction between Serb combatants and Serb civilians. It is therefore, all the more to the credit of Haradinaj that he has made the transition from KLA field commander to advocate of tolerance.”

 

Wesley K. Clark, NATO Supreme allied commander during the 1999 Kosova campaign, writing  in the N.Y. Times of March 14, 2005, refers to Haradinaj’s  “dignified exit” and concludes that  : “Independence may well be the best way to get a functioning state that produces real benefits for people, including Kosova’s Serbs. When people have responsibility, they tend to behave more responsibly.”

The resignation of Kosova’s Prime Minister and his indictment by the World’s Court have caused dismay among the Kosovar Albanian population who look upon Mr. Haradinaj as one of their heroes in the  history of the War of Liberation against Slobodan Milosevic’s ruthless war machinery.

Independently from the  accusations against him or his guerrilla units, Mr. Haradinaj again showed courage and immediately responded to the call for a chance to exculpate himself. It seems that the scenario of accusations against Haradinaj may be coming straight from the Serbian Intelligence Services themselves just as the accusations against his predecessor Dr. Bajram Rexhepi  turned out to be.

At any rate, it would be difficult to make a case in a court of law or for that matter in a gathering of “ elderly wise men”   by equating organized genocidal acts by the  regular army  of a UN recognized state with sporadic excessive violence or criminal acts by individuals of a voluntary  guerrilla force. Southeast European Times, as cited by “Koha Jone” of April 3,  writes: “There are international laws that are in force for the aggressor and for the protector of people, for the conqueror and for the freedom fighter, for the killer and for the victim.”

The Christian Science Monitor of March 11 edition, quotes Burim Kastrati, who survived a Serb massacre in May 1999, that left 21 people in his village of Zahaq dead, as saying that he is confident that Mr. Haradinaj will be able to clear his name: “ A person who is defending himself cannot be a criminal. We can’t compare the level of atrocities  by an army that killed 10.000 people to a soldier on the ground with only one weapon.”

Nevertheless, in those instances in which criminal acts have occurred against innocent civilians, those responsible should be held responsible in a court of law. Extenuating circumstances may be considered in the court’s independent judgment given that guerrilla units from their clandestine hideouts do not have the facilities, services  and sophistication of a regular army of an established state. Under those conditions,  it  is difficult “to make a neat distinction between Serb combatants and Serb civilians” to quote the former foreign minister of  Great Britain the late  Robin  Cook.

By contrast,  relative to the perpetrators of genocide in the former Yugoslavia and particularly in Bosnia, the  chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Carla Del Ponte, speaking of General Radko Mladic, the commander of the Serbian Army in Bosnia, and Radovan Karadzig, the leader of the Serbians in Bosnia during the war, has claimed that the Serbian and Bosnian  governments know where the wanted men are located, and when they say they are cooperating with the court, “they are lying.”

B92 News of April 5, 2005 reports that  Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Affairs Minister Vuko Draskovic  said that “ Hague suspect Ratko Mladic is hiding from the Serbian government with the help of the Security Information Agency (SIA). It is logical that the service knows where Mladic is, rather , whether he is in Serbia or not. Without this  protection and this web, Mladic would not be able to remain invisible. If I were prime minister, I would call the SIA chief and ask him where Mladic is. If he replied that he did not know, I would dismiss him from the position immediately.” Draskovic told the Financial Times.

The assertion of Mr. Draskovic is now being confirmed, through a Press Release by the U.S. State Department, by no less than  R. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs. On November 10, 2005,  in a briefing to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Kosova, Ambassador Nicolas R. Burns said: “We continue our diplomatic efforts to convince the Serb Government in Belgrade and the Republika Srpska Government in Banja Luka in Bosnia-Herzegovina to give up the two indicted war criminals  who are responsible for the massacres of ten years ago, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.  And I spoke this morning in the Senate about our withholding of a normal relationship with Serbia and Montenegro, specifically, until Mladic is turned over to the Hague.

They have to make a choice. If the Serb Government wants to be part- fully part of NATO and the EU, they have to then act like it. There is no country in NATO or the EU that would allow an indicted war criminal to roam at large in the territory of that state. And in fact, Mladic has been at large for ten years and for eight of those years was protected fully by the Serb state, by the Serb military, by their own admission

And  so if they want to be treated by the United States, by NATO, as a country that is worthy of future membership or even a partnership, then they have to act like it and have to arrest Mladic or convince him to surrender voluntarily. But that is an absolute prior condition to any Serb admission into Partnership for Peace. I gave that message directly to Prime Minister Kostunica as well as President Tadic when I was in Belgrade three weeks ago.”

Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, however, continues to  be succinctly defiant. This is what he proclaimed in 2004:  “This country isn’t a delivery service for human merchandise to the Hague tribunal.” (B92, February 21, 2004.) SO FAR AS IT IS PUBLICLY KNOWN, HE DOES NOT APPEAR TO HAVE CHANGED THIS POSITION.

The N.Y.Times of April 1, 2005, in an article written by Nicholas Wood, states: “The Bosnian Serb authorities said that they were investigating nearly 900 officials of their own government to determine whether they had a role in the killings of more than 7000 Muslim men and boys from the town of Srebenica in 1995 during the war in Bosnia. Human rights groups said the large number of officials accused of involvement in the killings showed that many officials, politicians and security officers who conducted the war were still in power.”

Since December 16, 2004, which is the date of the above mentioned interview with Mihajlo  Mihajlov,  the Serbian government and the authorities in Bosnia’s Serb Republic have reluctantly tried to satisfy partially  certain demands of the World’s  Court in The Hague.

The British Daily Guardian writes:  “ With a great deal of pressure from the European Union and the U.S., Kostunica has given up on standing against the extradition of inductees and has extradited a total of 13 suspects since last year. The reward for his actions will be the ‘green light’ for the beginning of discussions on the long road towards entrance into the EU.” Among the inductees,  is included Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, the commander of the Yugoslav Army during the conflict in Kosova. However, the most important protagonists of the Balkan crimes, Bosnian Serb  General  Ratko Mladic and Dr. Radovan  Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs,  both of them responsible for the carnage of Srebrenica, remain elusive.

 

In his testimony in front of the U.S. Congress on May 18, 2005, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said that “ Serbia should close its dark chapter of the nineties by arresting and extraditing the former general Ratko Mladic, and added that Washington is increasing its pressure on the Bosnian Serb government to do the same for Radovan Karadzig.”

 

Earlier, Carla del Ponte, the Hague Tribunal prosecutor for the war crimes in the former Yugoslavia,  had stated:” In my opinion, it would be impossible for  the international community  to attend the commemorative ceremonies on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the genocide in Srebenica,  if Karadzig and Mladic are not arrested and delivered to the Hague’s Tribunal. For myself, I shall not participate.” And, indeed, she did not attend the commemorative ceremonies.

Carla del Ponte, visiting Belgrade with the purpose of inducing the Serb government to arrest the above mentioned alleged war criminals, released a video on 6-02-05 covering  the massacre of 6 Bosnian  tortured and emaciated civilians  in  July  of 1995 by Serb militia near Srebenica, among them four children under the age of 18. This massacre was preceded by a blessing to the Serb militia on the part of a Serb Orthodox priest for success of the mission. This documentary video stunned  the Serb public opinion and the government itself  “forcing Serb leaders to finally acknowledge their country’s role in the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.” In fact, Mr. Tadic, the President of Serbia, appeared on   Belgrade’s T.V., with Carla  del Ponte, and declared :  “Serbia is deeply shocked.  The crimes had been carried out in the name of our people. Those images are proof of a monstrous crime committed against persons of different religion and the guilty have walked as free men until now”

The  Weekend Australian of the Times of June 4, 2005,  wryly comments :  “Serbian authorities quickly arrested the men after the footage was aired but questions remain over why, if their identities were known, it took 10 years to apprehend them. The answer may lie in the lure of eventual European Union membership for Serbia, as much as a desire for justice.”

Courtney Angela Brkic,  author of  “Stillness :And Other Stories” and “The Stone Fields” ( an account of her work excavating mass graves outside Srebenica), writes on the OP-ED of the New York Times of 07/11/05 under the title “ The Wages of Denial” :

“Serbia must relinquish the fairy tale that its own wartime suffering was equivalent to  the devastation it visited  on others. Adopting an honest declaration on Srebenica would have been an important first step, and the Serbian parliament should have taken it. For as long as Serbia’s people deny complicity in war crimes, they undercut any hope for justice and cheat their country out of any decent future. The Western aid money that has poured into Serbia may help rebuild the country’s infrastructure, but it will do nothing to cut out the cancer that riddles the country’s heart.

HEADING No: TWO

ADDENDUM

UPDATING OF THE 2005 ARTICLE

August 1, 2013

Mr.Haradinaj was acquitted twice from all charges by the International Court of Justice at the Hague. The following excerpt from Wikipedia gives a clear picture of  the saga  Mr. Haradinaj underwent while waiting for a closure of the calvary that often befalls upon leaders of Liberation Armies of oppressed peoples.

Even after the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation, their rights and dignity are often exposed to a world wide vilification engineered by the power of the propaganda machinery of the oppressor nation, in this case, the power of the Serbian state

As a former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Madonald of River Glaven QC said: ”This prosecution was a stupid attempt to equate resistance  with aggression. It was an embarrassment to the international community.”[41] (Quote from Wikipedia).

Thus, the victory of Mr. Haradinaj by acquiring from the Highest World Court  of Justice the mantel of complete innocence is doubly important not only for him personally but particularly for the people of Kosova. In the meantime, thousands of Kosova’s executed citizens still lie in the macabre unknown graves or have been incinerated in the abominable furnaces of a well organized terrorist state.

According to the Albanian publication “24 Ore” of July 31 ,2013, circa 12,500 Albanians were killed  and 2,750 have disappeared. To this date only 3 Serbs are behind bars for these massacres.

This dichotomy on the appreciation of life on Apartheid-like lines represents the challenge of our generation of men of good will on both sides of the ethnic divide.

The late Yugoslav writer and prisoner of conscience Mihajlo Mihajlov,  who for many years shared a Yugoslav prison cell with his fellow Kosovar writer Adem Demaci – a Sakharov Prize winner who suffered twenty-seven years in jail- is quoted above to have expressed his prescient feelings about the innocence of Mr. Ramush Haradinaj. He surely was aware of all the intrigues that the Serbian regime was capable of concocting when it came to denigrate or at least to place on equal footing the war of national liberation of the Kosovar Albanians with the horrific deeds of the Serbian army and police against the civilian population of Kosova. Indeed, almost one million of Kosova’s citizens were expelled from their ancestral lands in a gruesome attempt to achieve a final solution of the Serbian historical goal of ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population.

In July 1955, more than 7000 men and boys were executed by the Serbian army, while being under United Nations protection, in Srebenica, Bosnia.

The conscience of the civilized world could no longer tolerate a repeat of those horrific scenes reminiscent of the worst crimes against Humanity during World War II.

It is to the merit of NATO’s intervention, led by the American General Wesley K. Clark,  Allied Supreme Commander , and to the sacrifices of the Kosovar Liberation Army that finally the forces of evil succumbed and an Independent Kosovar State was established.

It is to the merit of President William Clinton, whose monument in the center of Prishtina symbolically guarantees  Kosova’s survival and to President George W. Bush who expedited the declaration of Kosova’s Independence and whose monument stands proud in a suburb of Tirana he visited, that a free Independent Kosova state is now a reality. At this writing ,the Independent State of Kosova is recognized by one hundred-one nations in the World.

Both President  William Clinton and President George W. Bush as well as  President  George H. W. Bush  who traced the red line to President Milosevic of Serbia, join President Woodrow Wilson in establishing a tradition of American Presidents to protect the vulnerable small nations and thus glorifying the nobility of the American Nation.

 

HEADING No:THREE

VERDICT OF THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL WITH ITS DOCUMENTION (VERBATIM)

 

EXCERPT FROM WIKIPEDIA

Second Trial

The second trial began in 2011 in front of a second Trial Chamber made up of three different judges. Mr. Haradinaj was represented again by Ben Emmerson Q.C, Mr. Rodney Dixon. The Prosecution called 56 witnesses against Mr. Haradinaj and again Mr. Haradinaj called no defence witness.

On November 29, 2012 Ramush Haradinaj was acquitted a second time.[39] This time, due to the extreme diligence of the court and of the parties there was no allegation of witness intimidation. Instead the judges found that not only was there no evidence to convict Mr. Haradinaj, the Court held that the evidence established that he had acted to prevent criminal behaviour where he could.[40]

The central allegation against Mr. Haradinaj was that he participated in a criminal plan to persecute civilians. The Court directly addressed this allegation and stated in its summary of the judgment that:

“Even if the existence of such common plan were established, which is not the finding of the Chamber, there is nothing in the evidence to indicate that Ramush Haradinaj or Idriz Balaj may have been involved in any such common plan. On the contrary, the evidence establishes that when Ramush Haradinaj found out about the detention and mistreatment of Skender Kuçi, he went to Jabllanicë/Jablanica to speak to Nazmi Brahimaj regarding Skender Kuçi’s release, telling him that “no such thing should happen anymore because this is damaging our cause”. When Witness 3 was brought to Ramush Haradinaj after his escape from Jabllanicë/Jablanica and subsequent apprehension by Lahi Brahimaj, Ramush Haradinaj offered food and accommodation to Witness 3 and released him to his family. No credible evidence has been presented by the Prosecution to establish that Ramush Haradinaj was even aware of the crimes committed at the KLA compound in Jabllanicë/Jablanica.”

After this ruling, there were serious questions raised as to why Mr. Haradinaj was ever indicted in the first place. Indeed, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Madonald of River Glaven QC, said yesterday: “This prosecution was a stupid attempt to equate resistance with aggression. It was an embarrassment to the international community.”[41] The governments of both Albania and Kosovo have demanded a public inquiry into the behavior of the Chief Prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte over her conduct to bring this indictment forward.[42]

Geoffrey Nice, the ICTY prosecutor in the Milošević case, wrote in a column in Koha Ditore that at least three experienced prosecution lawyers advised Del Ponte against indicting Ramush Haradinaj since it could not be proved he was guilty.[43]One of those lawyers was Andrew T Cayley Q.C. one of the most esteemed lawyers at the Tribunal and currently the Chief Prosecutor at the Cambodian Tribunal. He stated that he felt increasing pressure to bring the case despite an acute lack of evidence.[41] Sir Geoffrey Nice Q.C. commented that the pressure to bring the case against Ramush Haradinaj stemmed from the lead Prosecutor at the time, Carla Del Ponte and he speculated that she wanted to use the indictment against Haradinaj as a “coin” to trade with Belgrade in order to convince the Serbian Government to hand over its high profile war criminal fugitives, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadic.[41][44][45]

After a thorough review of the initial evidence, Andrew T. Cayley Q.C. wrote to the Chief Prosecutor at the time in which he told her that the prosecution could not proceed on the evidence it had.[41] That report was immediately discarded and Cayley was reprimanded for his views.[41] As a result of the manner in which the chief prosecutor ignored Cayley’s advice and pursued the indictment against Mr. Haradinaj, three senior prosecutors Geoffery Nice Q.C., Andrew T Cayley Q.C. and Mark Harmon left the office of the Prosecutor. [41]———————————–

HEADING No: FOUR

Conclusion

The freedom fighter Mr. Ramush Haradinaj  was acquitted twice from all charges. He is now a free citizen again. His reputation has been redeemed by the verdict of the International Court of Justice.

His political life was truncated and his family life  was terribly interrupted by the years of confinement and preoccupation with the proceedings at the Hague tribunal.

His saga, however, will not end for the foreseeable future. The following proverb, dating from circa 1650 and popularized by Voltaire in the 18th Century, : “If you throw enough dirt, some is  sure to stick” will continue to hunt him, the Court’s verdict of innocence not withstanding.

As a result, the obfuscation of  truth by a ruthless propaganda machine, whose intent is that of preventing  a judgment  of innocence, may induce even well intentioned observers to acquiesce to  the possibility of guilt for the alleged accused party. This may happen even in the face of a verdict of innocence by the World’s Court of Justice, albeit with a great deal of chagrin,  for a guerrilla leader  in such a position of historical responsibility presumably failed his people and the high ideals of Mankind i.e. concern for the wellbeing and dignity of his fellow man.

Carla Del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor at the Hague, is now exposed to open criticism by her peers for her overzealousness in prosecuting Mr. Haradinaj and may face charges of abuse of her powers by looming law suits. Indeed, “Prosecutor Sir Geoffery Nice QC  speculated that she wanted to use the indictment against Haradinaj as a “coin” to trade with Belgrade in order to convince the Serbian Government to hand over its high profile war criminal fugitives, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadic.[41][44][45]”

This accusation by her own peers will continue to tarnish her career and expose her alleged inexplicable cruelty for this would presumably imply  that the fate of Ramush Haradinaj was being considered by her as a bargaining “coin”  to achieve a goal that could crown her with success in her career by capturing the real world criminals that were hiding under Serbian government protection.

Even if the future court proceedings against her alleged abuse of power were to be dismissed, she will have to live with the doubts that her behavior fostered, for in effect Ramush Haradinaj was being treated as a person in which unlawful experiments could be performed.

In ancient times, this was epitomized in the Latin locution: “Fiat experimentum in corpore vili” (Let experiment be made in a worthless body), reminiscent of so many abhorring events handling “subhuman races” in world history. The phrase was recently used in a play by Jane Taylor “Ubu and the Truth Commission,” a work about the Apartheid state and its criminal acts.

In the meantime, the people and the Independent State of Kosova continue to face the hardships of a nascent nation, in search of the serenity that they deserve to live in peace with their neighbors within the framework of a democratic, prosperous and united Europe. The  innocence of a leading commander of the Liberation Army of Kosova (UCK), as declared by the Word’s Court, will satisfy their longing for recognition that their war against genocide was just and honorable and that their sacrifices had not been in vain.

In the meantime, the wounds of the Kosovar people continue to bleed. Their hope for atonement  and asking  forgiveness on the part of the Serbian government remains as yet an unachievable goal for them as well as for Humanity which is eager to see a resolution of the latest European ethnic conflict.

Nevertheless, these same wounds, that were inflicted upon the Kosovar Albanians, helped to strengthen the resolve of their people to continue to struggle to find their deserved place in the family of European nations. The Kosovar Albanians can definitely look upon the future with confidence. Their state is now recognized by one hundred and one nations and  its membership to the European Union has become a desirable  goal not only for the Kosovar people but for the European Union as well. Indeed, many of its members participated, as part of NATO, under the leadership of the United States, in the war against Yugoslavia to protect the Kosovar people from extinction.

As Europe becomes more integrated with the addition of other Balkan states, the United Nations’ membership for the state of Kosova will become a reality as well.

Once again, the United States will be there to make sure that Kosova, as a full-fledged member of the United Nations, will have the opportunity to give its contribution to this august World Institution.

The Kosovars may finally rejoice for their children and grandchildren will be able to grow up as citizens of  a United Europe and enjoy all the privileges that such a status would offer to them. The sacrifices of their parents and forefathers, finally have yielded their desired effect. At long last, the Kosovar Albanians have become  masters of their own fate!