Haradinaj's Gucat trial begins on 7 October

The whole process is set to end at the end of December this year, it is said at today's preparation conference for trial held by Specialised Chambers in The Hague.

The court in the case of former heads of the KLA War Veterans Organisation has approved today the prosecution's request to add another witness to the list.

In addition, among the orders issued by the judge was the timing of the start date of the regular judicial process until it is intended to complete the case completely on December 17th.

Chief Justice Charles L. Smith has declared that the SPS could call three witnesses to present its case.

The first <x0 Order, after the arguments raised by each of the parties have been considered, and in particular the application of the SPS to add a new witness to the witness list, the court accepts this request, as well as we will take into account the submissions from the SPS, as a result of the SPS rule of 118/1A panel decides that the ZPS can call three witnesses for the presentation of its case, witness 48-41, 48-42 and 48-66 respectively. The court further orders the SPS to call witness 48-66 as the last witness in order to allow sufficient time to take this witness into question. The SPS must hand over its list of witnesses by the order in which they will be questioned by the prosecution”, the chairman of the court has said.

After hearing the parties, the court has set October 7th as the date for opening the trial process, where the ZPS will read the entire indictment in the edited version.

The trial “Sets the date for opening the issue on October 7, 2021. Further in line with rule 124/2 and defence statements in terms of opening the ZPS case will read the correct version as deposited on July 5, 2021. The ZPS will issue the opening statement on 7 October and will try to conclude such a statement within this” date, Smith said.

The defence has demanded that the indictment be completely read in public, since as they have noted, the trial is public, and the indictment as a whole represents claims like SPS wrote them.

While the prosecution has declared that they anticipate two to three sessions for their opening sentence, with about four audio-visive sets of material.

The chairman of the court has ordered the Specialised Prosecutor's Office to grant protection to the list of material evidence within 24 hours before the opening of the case, including videos planned to be used as SPS material evidence.

According to the court, the SPS presentation should be completed on 18 October 2021.

At today's session, the SPS has to conclude questioning of its witnesses within four sessions.

While for the time of counter-questioning on the part of the defence, the court has not defined a deadline, only the chairman of the court has declared it will intervene in time if necessary.

The trial “Trup defines as the target date for closing the SPS issue by November 9, 2021. We also determine as the target date for the entire issue, December 17, 2021. These two dates can be changed according to the development of the” procedures, the chairman of the court said.

Among other things, Smith has ordered the parties to discuss issues relating to the order of material evidence in the request for direct evidence for the juro.

By September 20th, parties must inform the juro of their agreements and issues that have failed to resolve.