Lawyer Von Bone: A witness in Salih Mustafa case is a member of LDK

The parties have discussed the jury's court deadlines for presenting evidence from the defence, where lawyer Julius Von Bone has stated they plan to begin with the opening statement at the end of March and which follows the hearing of the first defence witness, Kosovo Press reports.

The testimony and evidence from the defence comes after the Specialised Prosecutor's Office officially closed its case on February 4th.

Let's think we'll start on March 23rd with the opening statement and we'll follow the next day with the first witness, the first witness would be the second witness listed on the list or not, said lawyer Von Bone.

He said it would take two hours to submit the opening statement.

The question is about March 23rd and 24th, the first witness to be able to be present is witness 2 on our list, witness number 200. I honestly think it would be helpful to use these two days to end up with his testimony, then next week we could plan other witnesses. And this is a witness that we've even heard as prosecution witnesses but we think we're going to need both days for him, so if we're going to call another person and if we're going to try to plan just in the morning for this witness's hearing, it's not going to be enough, so I think it would be better if we could use it all the two days”, he said.

While the head of the court has announced that on March 24, the courtroom will be able to be used only in the morning, since there will be another session.

The conference has also discussed the remaining materials defence aims to extract for SPS and the protection of victims.

Von Bone has indicated that one witness has been part of the Democratic League of Kosovo and another member of the KLA's General Staff.

“We have this witness again, and although this witness has witnessed something about Salih Mustaf's whereabouts, the main question is that this person is a member of the LDK, has been a member of one of the LDK branches, so that the best position to testify to issues of whether there was any hostility in the LDK, therefore he will testify. And in fact he has met Mr. Mustafa on several occasions and therefore the extraction of this witness, the documents of this witness, has not been given before and that's why his statement was included in the second group. Hopefully, his statement is important for determining the outcome of the case and the decision at the end of”, Von Bone said.

The preparation conference for carrying in the case against Salih Mustaf has been held before the introduction of defence evidence.

The conference will continue tomorrow, when the court will make certain decisions orally.

Mustafa has attended the conference through video connection.

The Act against Salih Mustafa, who is the first arrested by the Special, was confirmed on June 12th 2020, as he was arrested on September 24th last year, on the claim of war crimes.

He is standing at The Hague's detention centre, while in his statement to the court, Salih Mustafa has been declared innocent.