German newspaper FAZ: Partner of NATO is tried in The Hague

German journalist and writer Michael Martens, one of the best international connoisseurs and analysts who for years have covered the Balkans and Southeast Europe, has interviewed former President Thaci's lawyers, Americans Pierre-Richard Prosper and Gregory Kehoe.

We need to worry that the prosecution is engaged in the history rewrite process. Because if you go back to the current sources of time, you'll find that what they claim is not true. This prosecutor is reviewing the history of”, Prosper said.

The prosecutor claims the KLA was a criminal enterprise. Since NATO worked with the KLA in 1999, the question is: Is the prosecution saying that NATO has knowingly partnered with a criminal enterprise?

Prosper has added that Thaci's process also concerns history. Or better: an attempt to rewrite history.

Prosper says: “The way the prosecution is inevitably presenting its case raises questions about the role of the international community”, lawyer Prosper was quoted as saying.

Both, General Wesley Clark and former chief of staff UNMIK, Bernard Kouchner, is willing to testify, Kehoe told me, but he worries about the slow pace of Tribunal. Really. Only hearing 312 prosecution witnesses could last until 2029, a judge warned recently.

To prove their case, Thaci's defense wants to call US General Wesley Clark as witnesses NATO in Europe in 1999) and former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who headed the UN provisional administration in Kosovo after the war, has written German journalism.

It was the American government's stance in 1999 that there were no functional command structures within the KLA. That was NATO's stance. These governments certainly all relied on their intelligence agencies (their secret services) to achieve that conclusion”, Prosper insists.

They may have even believed they were organized, but the reality is that everyone knew they weren't. The KLA did not have a centralised command structure. Regional commanders were very important, they controlled their” regions, Prosper concludes.

However, the prosecution may quote documents for the contrary, for example, the KLA press communities from the war, which seem to demonstrate the existence of a clear chain of command within the KLA. What documents will be of greater weight in the perception of judges? He asked German journalist Martens.

But let's assume for a moment these communiqués (of the KLA) are authentic. It should be noted that at that time you had people who deliberately appeared to be larger than they are, because they wanted to build support”, Prosper said.

I wouldn't matter to the communiques (of the KLA). Those communiques were everywhere and no one knows exactly where they came from, who the authors were. So there's a real question about the authenticity of some of these <x1) communities, Prosper added.

It's a funny thing to pretend that he had the ability to give orders to fight hardened regional commanders with their gray hair and beards in a society where age matters a lot”, says Prosper.

In fact, the question may be asked whether regional KLA commanders would accept orders from Hashim Thaci.

Prosper calls this idea a laugh: “Thaci at the time was effectively a college student who had lived abroad in Switzerland and had returned to Kosovo”, he said.

The defence will be based on US internal documents like this one of 1999: A letter from the US State Department to Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, arguing against the arming of Albanians in Kosovo, as there was no “command and effective control at KLA”.

The other lawyer, Kehoe said it would be “absolutely” a defence argument that the KLA did not have a strictly hierarchical structure: “there was no functional command chain (...). The KLA was a group of individuals working at the base level (as we villages) to remove the Serbian printing regime”.

The lawyers of the former president Thaci are assisted by a team of about dozens of other legal experts, interns, researchers, interviews, etc. So if Hashim Thaci was found guilty, that certainly would not have been because very little was invested in defence, writes the German newspaper FAZ.