The trial of former KLA leaders in closed sessions, experts: No transparency, evidence not creditable

The trial of former KLA leaders in Kosovo's Specialised Chambers in The Hague in most of the time has been held in closed sessions. And this, according to experts, presents nontransparentity of special work.

According to him, the testimony of protected witnesses is not creditable and that this whole process is designed to undermine Kosovo's image.

The director of the Humanitarian Law Fund, Bekim Blakaj, said the reserve measures in the sessions are extremely serious, in the sense that much evidence cannot be heard at all.

He added that the Fund is trying to monitor all sessions. But according to him, so far it cannot be found if the process is fair, due to inadequate inaction.

“We are trying to monitor all judicial processes before Kosovo's Specialised Chambers in The Hague. Certainly the main process -- that is, the biggest process -- is the main process against Thaci, Veselin, Krasniqi and Selimi. It's still the witness hearing phase. We cannot appreciate at this very moment how well this judgment is developing. Because we're not able to follow every trial session to the end. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of the prosecution witnesses are of protected identity. It's not a problem that we don't know their identity, the problem is that the distributive measures in sessions are extremely serious in terms that many of their evidence cannot hear at all”.

We cannot hear either the evidence or most of the questions posed by self - defense and we do not know what it is about. Without a doubt, the defenders of the accused and the accused hear this evidence, so I'm not claiming there is a factory and so on, but we as public cannot hear this evidence. We remain waiting for the completion of the entire judicial process to see how far this trial has developed, he said.

University professor Milazim Krasniqi has said the entire process of judging leaders in The Hague is the political process that, according to him, is designed to harm Kosovo's image, EO reports. He said that based on the prosperity of this trial, he believes this process will end with the innocence of the accused.

Our experience is that the whole process is a political process and which is actually designed in a way to try to harm Kosovo's image, the very nature of this process is very closed by the fact that more witnesses are unknown to the public shows that the prosecution does not have enough arguments that it would rather publicize and serve opinion. My conviction is that all this process in the end will end with the innocence of the accused because the word comes not to equal the special court to the Serbian court, but if Serb sources and witnesses are true, then this would undoubtedly come to the serious test the legitimacy of the Special Court”, he said.

He's talking about closed hearings for the public said they're keeping closed because the evidence is not creditable.

I believe that the fact that they're closed we don't have information and we don't know how to evaluate it, but logically we're saying if there were strong, or strong, credit evidence, the prosecution would insist that they be open and not locked down,”, he said.

Hashim Thaci, Kadri Veselini, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi are facing war crimes charges during the recent war in Kosovo from March 1998 to September 1999. / EO