Jakup Krasniqi, former president of the Assembly of Kosovo, has decided not to undergo an examination by doctors at the detention center in The Hague. The news was made public by his daughter, Gresë Krasniqi, in a Facebook post, one month after he was sentenced to 25 years in prison by the Specialist Chambers.
She said that her father communicated this position to her during a phone conversation.
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“Some doctors came to examine me, and naturally I refused. I am here without any rights; every human right has been denied to me for six years now, so I do not need their care either. I want you to know that I will no longer accept any care from them,” Krasniqi told his daughter.
Jakup Krasniqi’s reference to six years relates to the period since his arrest. He was arrested on November 4, 2020, following an operation that lasted around 10 hours at his home in Pristina, and has been held at the detention center in The Hague ever since.
Gresë Krasniqi said that her father’s decision had worried her, particularly because he is at an age that requires special medical care. However, she acknowledged that she has no way to force him to abandon this position.
“As someone who has spent the first 30 years of my life knowing love and freedom, can I force another person, who has spent his entire life making sacrifices and who, with this latest sentence, is expected to spend more than 35 years in prisons, to adapt to a system that has brought him nothing but suffering and injustice?” she wrote.
In her calculation, she also includes the period when Jakup Krasniqi was a political prisoner in the former Yugoslavia. He was arrested and, on April 4, 1981, sentenced to 14 years in prison by the Yugoslav regime. After a retrial, his sentence was increased to 15 years after he declared that he was not Yugoslav, but Albanian. Krasniqi served 10 years, 3 months and 19 days in prison and was released on July 23, 1991. Together with the 25-year sentence handed down in The Hague, the time he has spent in prison exceeds 35 years.
“How can I ask him to accept care from those institutions when he feels betrayed precisely by the justice system that was supposed to protect him?” Gresë Krasniqi added.
She said she had felt powerless in the face of what she described as “such unjust international power.” According to her, the only thing she was able to tell her father during the phone call was: “We are here, Dad. We want you strong; we want you healthy.”
“Dad’s sentence is not a mistake waiting to be corrected. It is an injustice!” she concluded.
On September 16, the trial panel of the Specialist Chambers in The Hague announced the verdict against Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi. Thaçi and Krasniqi were each sentenced to 25 years in prison, Veseli to 18 years, and Selimi to 13 years, with the time spent in detention deducted.
Jakup Krasniqi was found guilty of war crimes, including arbitrary detention, cruel treatment, torture and unlawful killing. All four defendants were acquitted of crimes against humanity. Krasniqi’s defense team has announced that it will appeal the verdict.
