PRISTINA, 03. AUG. 2015 – Kosovo parliament voted to change the constitution to set up a new war crimes, including human organ harvesting, court to try former paramilitary Kosovo Liberation Army(KLA) fighters despite strong resistance from opposition politicians and ex-guerrillas.Kosovo’s parliament voted to change the constitution and create a war crimes court, MPs voted by 82 to five in favour of constitutional changes that will allow the establishment of the new war crimes court, under mounting pressure from Kosovo’s US and EU backers after the failure of an earlier vote in parliament last month. MPs in the 120-seat parliament also approved two draft laws required to set up the new court. Prime Minister Isa Mustafa told parliament before the vote that Kosovo had to establish the special court in order to fulfil its obligations to its Western partners and because local courts had not managed to ensure justice. “Unfortunately, the failure of the rule of law, in many cases, has influenced the international community’s loss of trust that we can develop this process in our country,” Mustafa said. Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Hashim Thaci said that it was not an easy decision but it was necessary. “This challenge should not be an obstacle which will cost our country a lot, but instead [a part of our] euro-Atlantic integration,” Thaci said. The court has provoked anger in Kosovo, with veterans’ associations and opposition parties claiming that it is an insult to the Kosovo Liberation Army’s armed struggle to escape Serbian control during the 1998-99 conflict. So-called ‘specialised chambers’ will be created to deal with allegations that Kosovo Liberation Army fighters were involved in the killings, abductions, illegal detentions, organ trafficking and persecution of Serbs, Roma and Kosovo Albanians believed to be collaborators with the Serbian regime. The allegations first surfaced in a report published in 2011 by the resolution of the Council of Europe(CoE). The resolution of the Council of Europe was based on the repport of Swiss CoE parlamentarian Dick Marty who claimed that crimes against civilians such as kidnapping, torture and organ-harvesting were committed by members of the KLA during the conflict. The report implicated current Foreign Minister Thaci, the former political head of the KLA. Thaci strongly denied any wrongdoing. US diplomats had warned that a failure to vote for the new special court could lead to it being set up by the UN Security Council instead – as has been proposed by Serbia’s ally Russia. The now-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which counts among its former ranks much of Kosovo’s current political elite, has been dogged for years by allegations it removed organs from ethnic Serb captives, who were then killed and their organs sold on the black market. Kosovo’s chief diplomatic and financial backers, the United States and the European Union, have pressed Kosovo to address the accusations. They said that failure to create the court risks seeing the issue taken up by the United Nations Security Council and the inevitable involvement of Serbia’s big-power ally Russia, which opposes Kosovo sovereignty. Kosovo unilateraly declared independence from Serbia in 2008, despite the 1244 UN Security Council resolution on the UN administration of Kosovo, and has been recognized by over 100 states, but not by five European Union member states, Serbia, Russia, China, India, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa and many other countries. The new court will be located in the Netherlands, due to concerns over witness intimidation and judicial corruption in Kosovo.
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