Gola at PACE: Dick Marty’s report claims were not proven; we believe the appeal will overturn the charges

Kosovo Assembly Deputy Speaker Ardian Gola, during the autumn session of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) in Strasbourg, spoke about the proceedings at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, declaring that the central claims of the Dick Marty report were not proven.

Referring to recent convictions mentioned in the report under discussion at PACE, Gola said the judicial process has not proven the claims of organ trafficking and the so-called “Yellow House.”

“Regarding the recent convictions by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers mentioned in the report, it must be stressed that the central claims of the Dick Marty report were not proven. There were no crimes against humanity, no organ trafficking and no ‘Yellow House,'” Gola said.

He expressed confidence that the remaining charges against the former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders would be overturned on appeal.

“As for the remaining charges, we strongly believe that the Appeals Panel will overturn them if it rigorously applies international justice standards, and the KLA leaders will be free,” the deputy speaker said.

In his speech, Gola also spoke about the context in which the KLA was created, describing it as a response to decades of oppression by Slobodan Milošević’s regime.

“The KLA emerged as a response to decades of oppression and waged a just war to liberate the people of Kosovo from Milošević’s dictatorial Serbia, which was itself the source of terror and bloody wars across the former Yugoslavia,” he said.

Gola called on Europe to remain vigilant against what he called attempts to distort historical truth and repeat the events of the ’90s.

“Europe must remain vigilant and not allow the barbarism of the ’90s to be repeated by allowing the distortion and inversion of historical truths,” Gola said.

In the rest of his speech, the deputy speaker also spoke about the electoral process in Kosovo, the political situation around the presidential election, and the participation of non-majority communities in elections.

He thanked the PACE president and the Assembly delegation for their work, saying the report on the electoral process proves, in his view, that Kosovo has built a “stable and self-correcting” electoral system, Telegrafi reports.