Can Special Court jurisdiction be expanded?

It is not impossible for the Specialised Chambers and Prosecutor's Office in The Hague, known as the Special Court for War Crimes in Kosovo, to investigate and judge all crimes that were committed during the war in Kosovo, and not only the alleged crimes of members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK), says Enver Hasani, law and International Relations professor.

But, according to him, for such a thing, it is necessary to complete the basis of the constitutional amendment, Article 162 of the Constitution of Kosovo, dedicated to the Specialised Chambers, as well as to examine Article 6 of the Law on These Chambers. But for all of this, according to Professor Hasani, therefore the internal and international political will is needed, as well as the co-ordination between these factors.

Political affairs acquaintance, Armend Muja, estimates that until now, political courage has been lacking within the political spectrum of Kosovo, to initiate necessary constitutional and legal changes, for expanding the mandate of Specialised Chambers, so that all crimes are investigated and tried, by anyone committed in Kosovo during the last war.

What do the Constitution and the Law for Specialized Chambers say?

Article 162 of the Kosovo Constitution says that the Republic of Kosovo can establish Specialised Chambers and a Specialised Prosecutor's Office under the Kosovo justice system “to fulfil international obligations concerning the Council of Europe General Assembly Report 12462, dated January 7, 2011”.

In the League for Specialised Chambers and the Specialised Prosecutor's Office, approved by the Assembly of Kosovo in Article 6, which speaks of a painful jurisdiction, it is said that the Special Chambers have jurisdiction over the previous crimes at Article 12 - 16 involving the Council of Europe Assembly Report”.

But, in the 42-page report of the Council of Europe General Assembly, on no page and no sentence was reported the crimes of Serbian forces committed in Kosovo, but only the claims of crimes committed by KLA members.

Item Testing Special Court's Work

Head of the Committee for Foreign Affairs in the United States House of Representatives, Elliot Engel, November 5He has criticised the Specialised Chambers and the Specialised Prosecutor's Office, as according to him, only citizens of an ethnicity -- Albanians -- have targeted.

Engel has stressed that the status that the Special Court has created has not limited it to dealing with Albanians only, and that the “law says the jurisdiction of the court is for war crimes that have been committed in Kosovo during a certain time in the period of war”.

“I understand that the Serbian government and military officials who have been involved in genocide are out of the Special Court's scope. But that does not mean that it should not investigate and judge wrongdoers under the law, even in the absence of”, Engel has said.

He has called on the U.S. Department of Justice to examine the work of the Special Court and “ensure that he is not targeting people only on the basis of their ethnicity “and has also called on the US's support and co-operation with this court to prevent them from reaching conclusions regarding this matter”.

(complete text at REL)