In Special, Judgment Against Thaci and Others Continues

The fourth witness to carry the 4748 code, in the trial against former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders, as he gave his testimony last week for two consecutive days under protection, without hearing from the public.

Otherwise the first indictment against four indictees was confirmed on October 26, 2020, and was made public on November 5, 2020. On July 22, 2021, the Judge of Pre-Procedure Procedures, through two rulings, partially adopted the defence motions and ordered the SPS to correct and change the indictment, among other things, excluding the responsibility of joint criminal enterprise III for concrete crimes (three appeals against that decision, handed down by Thaci, Selimi and Krasniqi, were rejected by the Court of Appeals on 22 August 2022).

The SPS handed over the amended indictment on September 3, 2021. On December 23rd 2022, the Pre-Procedure Judge approved the SPS's request for changing the indictment in order to include a number of new charges, namely, other detention centres in the Suhareka municipality, new incidents of persecution and unlawful murder in Gjilan, as well as new incidents of the accused's personal participation in the crimes he is charged with. Following the rejection of Thaci's and Wessel appeals against this ruling by the Appeals Court panel on March 22, 2022, the SPS handed over the revised public version of the amended indictment on April 29, 2022.

On July 22nd, 2022, the Pre-Precial Procedure Judge approved, in part, Thaci's defence request, which claims shortcomings in the last indictment and also ordered the SPS that, until September 30th, 2022, present the further amended indictment, with additional information concerning the actual charges. The additional information concerns the names of direct perpetrators, victims and relevant locations in concrete paragraphs in the current indictment.

On 29 September 2022, the Pre-Precitable Procedure Judge approved the SPS's request to withdraw from the indictment of crimes claims in the Ferizaj municipality and ordered the SPS to reflect this withdrawal of the charges in the further amended indictment, which was handed over on September 30th 2022. A less edited version of the indictment was delivered on February 27, 2023. Actually, this is the indictment in effect on this case.

According to the indictment, the crimes presented in it were committed at least from March 1998 to September 1999 at several locations in Kosovo, as well as in Kukes and Chahan, in northern Albania. These crimes were allegedly committed by KLA members against hundreds of civilians and persons who did not participate in the fighting. The indictment claims that Thaci, Veselin, Selimi and Krasniqi have individual criminal responsibility for crimes committed in the context of an uninternational armed conflict in Kosovo and were part of a widespread and systematic attack on persons suspected of opposing KLA.

The trial began on April 3rd, 2023 with the opening statements of the Specialised Prosecutor and the representative of the victims, followed by defence teams on April 4th and April 5, 2023