Justice Minister Seeks Serbia Clearing War Crimes

Kosovo Justice Minister Abelard Tahiri has provided an interview for the Belgrade newspaper Danas. He has reflected on Serbia's request to engage in research into the murder of Oliver Ivanovic. Tahiri has said that Kosovo has signed a co-operation protocol in the Brussels dialogue and is ready to co-operate with every state, including Serbia in exchange for information, but has invited Serbia to first co-operate in finding the killers of the Bytyqi brothers, war crimes, as well as allegations of burning missing Albanian troops, substances never prosecuted by Serbian courts.

According to Danas, Tahiri has also invited the Serbian state to respond to who killed Serbian children at the “Panda” cafe in 1998, a crime for which the Serbian president himself had cast doubts that was committed by Serbian intelligence services.

Tahiri in this interview has stated there are two major obstacles to this co-operation between the two states, Serbia's unwillingness to deal with its 1999 crimes, as well as Serbian attempts to block Kosovo from membership in INTERPOL respectively.

“It is absurd that Kosovo has examined in its trials more war crimes cases than Serbia” while claiming that “is proven that Serbian leaders police, army and paramilitary were responsible for horrible crimes”.

Tahiri is presented as a new member of Albanian politics in Kosovo, “as well as Vlora Citaku and Petrit Selimi”, while quoted as even Kosovo portals have called the minister of justice as one of the new pillars of the Democratic Party of Kosovo.