PRISTINA, 10. OCT. 2016 – President Hashim Thaci sent letters to Kosovo prosecutors urging them to take action to resolve a series of crimes against both ethnic Albanians and Serbs during and after the war in 1999. Thaci told a press conference that he had sent four letters about the unresolved crimes against Kosovo Albanians and Serbs to the head of the state prosecution and the Kosovo Prosecutorial Council, and said that he expects them to take action. He explained that he sent the letters now because domestic judicial institutions have taken over the prosecution of such crimes from the EU’s rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX. “The reason is that since June 2016, almost all the executive competencies have been transferred from EULEX to local institutions. I am the president of the country and I am directly addressing the institutions,” he said. Thaci’s move also comes ahead of the establishment of a new Hague-based special court which will try former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters for crimes committed during and after the war. In the first letter, Thaci said he asked the prosecutors to investigate crimes committed by Serbian forces in Prekaz, Recak, Izbice, Likoshan, Lubeniq, Grashtince, as well as other cases of murders of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by Serbs. In the second letter, he said he asked for murders and other crimes committed after the war to be investigated, such as the cases of the Bytyqi brothers, three Albanian-Americans who were killed in Serbia, the attempted assassination of former Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova in 2005, and the murders of Serbs in Gracke/Staro Gracko, Gorazhdec/Gorazdevac, and on a bus that was attacked near Podujevo while travelling to Nis in Serbia in 2001, when 12 people were killed and over 40 injured. In the third letter, Thaci called for investigations into rapes of women in Kosovo by Serbian forces. “This war wound was kept unjustly silent for so long, and thanks to the braveness of the victims, now we have facts about these crimes. Kosovo citizens, victims and society need justice,” Thaci said. In the fourth letter, he asked for investigations into the destruction of cultural monuments during and after the war. “Solving these criminal cases would strengthen the trust of citizens and international partners in Kosovo’s justice institutions,” he said.
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