Over 150 thousand materials in court drawers

Kosovo lawyers are praising that they have good relations with the courts, as they think they are transparent. They have complaints about turning cases into retrials, where, according to them, so far, there are over 150 thousand cases which remain in judges' drawers and that turning cases into retrial is only making it difficult.

They also say that there are lawyers in Kosovo who are with high professional preparations, who can also be presented to international courts for various cases.

Lawyer Yll Zeka said the judicial system in the country with its current composition is seen as having visible improvements every day, because according to him, the Judiciary Council has been activated to improve the situation in the judicial system.

Zeka said lawyers in the country have a high professional preparation to deal with various cases, as there is an advanced legal education system in the country.

We can say that the lawyer stands well in professional preparation, we share the same professionalism with both judges and prosecutors. Lawyers have an advanced system of continued legal education, which actually ensures that lawyers have a good professionalism to face in either criminal terms in the indictment that they filed on the prosecution's side or in civilian terms in lawsuits and other civil processes”, he said.

He added that today there are over 150 thousand cases which remain in judges' drawers and that turning cases into retrial is only making the situation difficult.

We have a systemic problem here regarding the retrial return. If we talk about the criminal aspect, then we are often faced with poor accusations where not in any case, especially we have high levels involving corrupt issues, issues of misuse of official duties, and here in many cases we face poor accusations. So it is often that even if this accusation reaches the first degree in the basic courts, then it is often to be reversed by the Court of Appeals. We have a problem with restoring cases, which I believe the Court of Appeals should consider as often as possible, when there are legal conditions to decide meritably and not turn cases into restoration. Because then it's taking a long time, we have today a very large number of cases which expect treatment in our courts, we have over 150 thousand cases which remain in our judges' drawers, and the return of cases to the retrial only makes this state” difficult, Zeka told EO.

Even lawyer Tome Gashi said courts in Kosovo are transparent with lawyers by respecting those envisioned by law, according to him are very few cases that lawyers are denied participation in courts.

Any lawyer who goes to the Court has their rights and obligations and I believe that very few cases of attorneys being denied active participation because this is legally defined and the courts are transparent and everything that is first by law is allowed and we certainly as lawyers use our rights. We also have the responsibility to the court in the interest of the client at all times, but it's more than the client's interest is the interest of justice and it's certain that in the courtroom everyone should behave with dignity towards the judge, prosecutor and all participants who are in a criminal or civil prosecution. All is in order only in certain cases that are except can be 1 percent”.

Gashi said local lawyers are well prepared and that, according to him, most lawyers are on that level to appear in international courts.

I believe that most lawyers, if we're talking about high profile issues, for example, like this Special Court right now, earlier in The Hague Tribun for the former Yugoslavia, have participated in Haradinaj and Limaj's case, but I believe most lawyers are on the level to appear in international and international courts, as international lawyers are presented, but I believe that our level of knowledge and our skills is not less than that of others. We believe that in war crimes cases, as ours is the Special Court against former KLA leaders, I think the greatest contribution local lawyers can make because you know the story of what happened can be much more reasonable in explanation and more reliable. But most choose to have international lawyers. A Kosovo lawyer can explain to the Special Court or another court the situation during the war much better than a lawyer who has only seen on television”, he said.

Gashi had remarks as to the cases that are returning to the retrial, according to him, the cases are not being filtered at all in the country. He said that as a result of not filtering cases of cases, courts and prosecutors are being preoccupied with subjects.

And if you don't want to talk about it, then you'll be able to do it. I believe that if one case is reported to the police then the police in most cases of taking it out of their own hands send it to the prosecution, the prosecution in most cases doesn't even make a filter to the court on the first scale. There are cases that the first degree decides the way it decides to say that the Court of Appeals must be wiser by law, and much of it ends up in the Supreme Court as it did in the police. I think that each basis of legal provisions on the basis of the authority given to the law should filter out the cases and if the cases are filtered out, so that they don't go to a higher instance, then we would have a lot less substance in our courts and prosecutors and not be overworked with a piece of subjects that don't belong there at all and have to stop from the beginning when reported without any evidence, he said. /Exaonline