Will the law on the Special Court undergo changes?

Kosovo’s Assembly approved, with 99 votes, a declaration concerning the verdict of the Special Court based in The Hague, which two weeks ago found four former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army guilty of war crimes: Hashim Thaçi, Jakup Krasniqi, Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi. Serbian lawmakers did not take part in the vote.

The declaration expresses deep concern over the first-instance ruling against the four former KLA leaders and considers unacceptable the finding that a common criminal purpose existed, as mentioned during the trial.

It also emphasizes that respect for the rule of law includes both the right and the responsibility to challenge, through legal and institutional means, a verdict that Kosovo’s Assembly considers unjust.

The declaration, which contains seven points, recalls that the people’s struggle for freedom and independence through the KLA emerged under conditions of systematic repression and Serbia’s genocidal crimes, at a time when the people of Kosovo were denied their fundamental rights and even the possibility of living freely in their own country.

The text also highlights the decisive importance of NATO’s intervention in stopping the violence against the people of Kosovo and liberating the country.

“No verdict can undo the historical truth of the war in Kosovo. Serbia committed genocide and crimes against humanity,” the declaration states.

Following the Hague ruling, the Assembly calls on all Kosovo state institutions to take all necessary steps to protect the truth and the legitimacy of the people of Kosovo’s liberation war, as well as to draft a joint state strategy for coordinating legal, institutional and diplomatic actions to protect and affirm the full historical truth about the just war for freedom and liberation.

The Assembly also calls on the Specialist Chambers to respect their mandate in line with the will of Kosovo’s Assembly, opposing any attempt to overturn the historical truth, question the liberation war, or equate the people who fought for freedom and survival with the regime that oppressed them.

On September 16, the Special Court handed down war-crimes sentences to four former KLA leaders. Hashim Thaçi and Jakup Krasniqi were each sentenced to 25 years in prison, Kadri Veseli to 18 years and Rexhep Selimi to 13 years.

Last week, the Democratic Party of Kosovo, whose political platform embodies the values of the KLA war, proposed that the government begin reviewing the amendments submitted to the draft law on the Specialist Chambers, commonly known as the Special Court.

Under the draft law, the jurisdiction of the Special Court would be limited to the criminal offenses mentioned in the 2011 report of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which addressed, among other things, allegations of postwar organ trafficking in Kosovo. The period covered by the court—from January 1998 to December 2000—would also be changed to the period from July 1, 1999, to December 2000. The draft law also provides for Special Court sentences to be served in Kosovo and for convicted persons not to be excluded from the President of Kosovo’s power to grant pardons. The law has not yet been passed, but has been submitted to the government.

Legal experts assess that the initiatives to supplement and amend the law on the Specialist Chambers are highly complex. Ehat Miftaraj of the Kosovo Law Institute told DW that members of the Assembly have the right and constitutional authority to initiate amendments to the law, provided that these changes do not undermine the obligations Kosovo assumed under the constitutional amendment established by Article 162 of the Constitution. According to him, no amendment or supplement to the law may contradict the international obligations undertaken by the Republic of Kosovo.

Miftaraj added that any amendment must be made in consultation and cooperation with the key states of the Council of the European Union or with the United States, so that the changes have an effect and can be implemented in practice.

Since the sentences were handed down against the former KLA leaders, protests against the Special Court’s ruling have continued every day in Pristina and other cities across Kosovo.

The Specialist Chambers, or the Special Court as it is commonly known, were established by Kosovo’s Assembly in 2015 and are based in The Hague. Their staff is entirely international.

The Special Court deals only with cases related to allegations of crimes committed by KLA members during the 1998–1999 war. It became part of Kosovo’s Constitution through a special article, which was approved by two-thirds of the lawmakers at the time, as well as by two-thirds of minority lawmakers, including Kosovo Serb representatives in the Assembly.

Under two other articles of the Constitution, the Special Court’s mandate ends only when the Council of the European Union notifies Kosovo that the mandate has ended, making it a mechanism over which Kosovo authorities, under the existing law, have no authority. / DW