Accredited lawyer from the Special: Proceeding procedure against former KLA leaders in The Hague

The lawyer accredited by the Special Court, Artan Qerkeyni, estimates he is stalling procedures on former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders, meanwhile, criticises the prosecutor for the delay in handing over evidence.

The prosecution says the prosecution has conducted investigations even before the court's establishment, so according to him they have had enough time to finalise their investigations.

The procedure is dragging on, there's no need for the prosecution to be so late in handing over the defense evidence, because it's known that the defence can't begin its investigation without getting the entire file available to the prosecution. It is known that investigative actions in the cases of Specialised Chambers have taken place even before the court itself is established, but even after the law has been passed, so that they have had enough time to conduct all investigations, and at the moment the defence indictment arises to hand over all the evidence available to them, both the excusing and the evidence they consider to be guilty of. Therefore, the prosecution's inaction in due time with these delays is affecting the procedure to drag on and violate that constitutional standard for judging a person within the reasonable” deadline, says Qerkeyni.

In an interview for Kosova priss, the lawyer says that in terms of the prosecution's delay the judge of the preliminary procedure should react and, according to him, place deadlines for their procedure actions, which would be in place for the speed of the procedure.

The prosecutor's pre-procedure trial must control the prosecution's actions to sanction in one way or another the neglect that the prosecution is making with the case of submitting evidence, to determine strict deadlines, and also to determine that if the prosecution does not deliver evidence within the set term, then the evidence not be accepted because we know the judgment is developed to reveal the truth of pro are articles, some principles that favour judgment within the reasonable deadline, and the decision's duty of the preliminary procedure is to find a balance between real evidence and justice within a reasonable term, he says.

In addition to the prosecution's delays, Qerkey estimates that defence teams have created other difficulties that directly affect their work on the field.

The defense needs to know the identity of the witness, that's what I'm saying about the fact that protection cannot successfully challenge the witness's credibility if I don't know who's testifying. This simply violates one of the fundamental principles of the criminal procedure, which is equal to the ʹarme in the procedure, because the prosecution is knowing the identity of the witness while the defence is not knowing the identity of the witness, even though this is of a fundamental importance for providing effective protection of”, says Qerkey.

In the pre-trial case against Thaci and others so far, several conferences on the performance of the issue have been held.

Hashim Thaci, Jakup Krasniqi, Kadri Veselin and Rexhep Selimi are staying at The Hague detention centre from November 2020 and weighing charges under war crimes claim.

In addition to this case, which is in preliminary procedure, the Specialised Chambers in The Hague are towards the end of the trial process against Salih Mustaf.

In this case, Artan Qerkeyn estimates that closed sessions and numerous editings have been unable to be conveyed overall.

There have been many private sessions, and in those closed sessions for the public we haven't had access and therefore we can't form our conviction of what happened in those sessions, there's been a lot of editings, and these are enabling the opinion of conveying the trial and the opinion itself having a sense of whether the guilt has been proven or not, and that's why I think the opinion has remained dedicated to convey Salih Mustaf's case in its entire <11x>

In the Special Court, the case is also in advance against former KLA member Peter Shala, for whom the prosecution claims to have committed war crimes.

While awaiting an indictment are former heads of the KLA War Veterans Organisation, Hysni Gucati and Nasim Haradinaj, who are accused of obstructing justice.