Klestor Veseli recounts coded greeting with his father in The Hague courtroom: We hope the Appeals Chamber will correct this injustice

Klestor Veseli, the son of former President of the Assembly of Kosovo Kadri Veseli, has shared on social media his emotions and experiences during the sentencing of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s senior leaders by the Specialist Chambers in The Hague.

In a lengthy post, he describes in detail the minutes of waiting and the visual encounter with his father in the courtroom, where they exchanged a special hand gesture, a symbol he associates with the message “I love you.” According to him, the gesture was borrowed from sign language and had been used by Kadri Veseli during political activities to address the people.

He says that even before the formal reading of the verdict, he had sensed what was about to happen. “From the way the judges were expressing themselves, I understood that they were going to strike my father and his comrades. What we had feared most was becoming a reality,” he recounts.

According to Klestor Veseli, the families’ concern stemmed not from justice, but from political interference. “In the face of this evil, we are not losing faith in Western values, and we are convinced that the Appeals Chamber will set right this decision tainted by politics,” he continues.

In his response, he stresses that the relatives of those convicted will not back down and appeals to supporters not to respond with anger. “It must be clear: there is no alternative but to surrender, there is no place for shame, and there is no room for grief and hatred,” he says.

The closing section of the post is dedicated to remembering the families of the fallen, missing persons, and KLA fighters. He stresses that the family members of the former KLA leader “have an unresolved debt” to all those who sacrificed themselves for the freedom of Kosovo.

At the end, Klestor Veseli declares that, before God and the entire Albanian nation, his father Kadri Veseli, together with Hashim Thaçi, Jakup Krasniqi, Rexhep Selimi, Salih Mustafa, and Pjetër Shala, “will forever remain people with a clear conscience.”