Bajrami: The Hague ruling has caused a “national trauma

University professor Arsim Bajrami has described the latest ruling by the Specialist Chambers in The Hague as a “national shock,” saying it has caused trauma among the citizens of Kosovo after a decade-long wait since the institution was established.

Speaking on the “Info Magazine” program, Bajrami said the ruling had undermined the trust of citizens and the Assembly of Kosovo, which, according to him, had made an extremely difficult decision to establish the court—an undertaking that a normal state would not have taken.

He said that, instead of a proper judicial process and European justice based on the rule of law, a decision had been handed down that he considered scandalous and political. According to Bajrami, the ruling also risks compromising Kosovo’s state-building process.

His criticism focused particularly on the opening speech by the presiding judge, which he described as entirely political. Bajrami said the speech presented an unfair interpretation of history, creating the possibility that an uninformed European citizen might think that Albanians had committed aggression and waged war against Serbia.

He stressed that the speech made no mention whatsoever of the fact that the Kosovo Liberation Army had been established and operated as a liberation organization, with the aim of defending against the aggression and genocide carried out by Serbia.