Not in my name!

By Mirjon Brahimllari

Yesterday’s decision by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and the conviction of the former KLA leaders and then political leaders of the state of Kosovo is the next injustice that the Great Powers yesterday, and the internationals today, inflict on the most suffering people of this continent.

Unfortunately, this decision was the chronicle of an announced murder. We all knew, we felt it was coming (though not in this form), but we hoped until the end, naively, that justice would not be torn apart and that the tragedy would not happen.

They knew it too, the 4 liberators, who, after 6 years in detention, abandoned alone in the battlefield by their states, to our shame, were now facing not the prosecution, not the Special Court, not the evidence and the facts, but the cruelty of the new order that is slowly being established on the planet.

This conviction decision was not a surprise and did not come like a bolt from the blue. From the very beginning, the Specialist Chambers were not created under pressure from the internationals to declare the KLA fighters innocent. On the contrary, their creation as a token for the Russian-Serbian diplomatic offensive, the tales of yellow houses and organ trafficking to justify its establishment, as well as the hundreds of millions of euros in costs to create and keep it running, would inevitably translate into convictions to satisfy someone and to justify everything.

But not like this. Do not mock Albanians like this.

The approach and behavior throughout all these years of the Special Court toward the 4 heroes of a people was the prelude to this absurd decision. Perhaps not even a court in North Korea could justify keeping the 4 political leaders of a European state for 6 years in detention, despite their voluntary surrender before the court. Couldn’t the security measure for them, or at least for one of them, be replaced? Was it justified to keep Jakup Krasniqi, 75 years old, in detention for 6 years?

How dangerous was the former president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, for the court, that they didn’t even let him accompany his father or throw a handful of earth on the day of the funeral? But the liberators and the people they liberated will also bear this injustice. Even the judges who handed down the sentence know that we will endure. They know because Jakupi told them in the courtroom – Man is stronger than stone, because what stone cannot bear, man bears.

Now is not the time to take reckless actions, behaviors that lead nowhere, nor is it the time to mourn the misfortune that befell us. Now, more than ever, all forces and factors must unite within and beyond borders. It is time for the two Albanian states in the Balkans, with a unified strategy, jointly and immediately, to take measures to preempt this misfortune in the appeal trial. Because the first-instance decision, as heavy as it was, was just as shameful, so it must be overturned at all costs.

First, the judgment is characterized by a marked lack of reasoning. Initially, in the part where it analyzes the historical context, the court does not touch at all on the way and reason how and why the KLA was born, nor on the Serbian genocide in Kosovo already legally recognized by previous judicial decisions of the Hague Tribunal, but simply makes a chronology in a few paragraphs of political and social developments in Kosovo of the early ’90s. Deliberately, the court in the judgment relativizes the historical context and removes from the picture the barbaric violence of the Serbian army and police against the civilian population, the documented ethnic cleansing, thousands of raped women, the killing of hundreds and thousands of infants and children, women and the elderly, as well as dozens of massacres throughout Kosovo.

By avoiding even mentioning this genocide committed against the population of Kosovo, the court manages to convict the liberators and the KLA for having unlawfully detained and arrested some people, ruling that: “In particular, with very limited exceptions, the detainees were not officially informed of the reasons for their detention, did not appear without delay before a judge or other competent authority and were not given the opportunity to challenge the legality of their detention. On the contrary, they remained at the arbitrary mercy of the detainers. Detainees were often kept in rooms that were too small to accommodate all the detainees held in them. There were no beddings and covers, or they were inadequate. Many detainees were forced to sleep on concrete floors. Also, with limited exceptions, detainees were not offered health care. Detainees were not allowed to wash; most of them did not have adequate toilets…” So, according to the court, at the height of an unprecedented genocide in the history of humanity after World War II, the victims of this genocide should be punished, because their opponents detained during the war and genocide were not provided with adequate blankets and toilets.

Second, the judgment is entirely in violation of the principle of proportionality, referring here to all previous decisions given by international judicial bodies for events that occurred in Kosovo in that period. There is no legal logic and no legal argument can stand that the generals of the official Serbian state machinery, found guilty even of crimes against humanity, in the role of the aggressor in this conflict, should be punished less than some civilian boys who went underground waging a guerrilla war to protect their people from the aggressors, even though they were found innocent of crimes against humanity.

This is a legal aberration that no courtroom can sustain. This aberration borders on hysteria when you realize that Slobodan Milosevic, the butcher of the Balkans, was not convicted for war crimes, but for war crimes is convicted, after 3 decades, the then 30-year-old young man who took up arms to protect the innocent population from the executioner of Belgrade.

Third, from the way the narrative of this judgment is built, it does not convict only the 4 liberators, but convicts all the leaders of the KLA war. Moreover, the court goes so far as to declare guilty of war crimes other citizens of the Republic of Kosovo, although they were neither accused nor participants in that process. “The trial panel also found that a number of other persons – Ladi Brahimaj, Fatmir Limaj, Sylejman Selimi, Rustem Mustafa, Latif Gashi, Shukri Buja and Sabit Geci, had fallen into agreement for the common criminal purpose and took part in its realization…” Pg. 99.

Fourth, in at least 10 instances in this judgment, mentioned in at least 10 paragraphs of it (pg. 41, 43, 46, 47, 53, 56, 64, 65, 68, 72), the court rules that in the territory of the Republic of Albania, specifically in northern Albania, war crimes were committed by the KLA. This finding and reasoning of the court in this judgment directly touches the moral and institutional integrity of a third state, not a party to this process. This argument, mentioned ten times in this judgment, tries to touch and smear the Republic of Albania, by finding that Albania allowed war crimes to be committed on its territory. This fact legitimizes, besides morally, now also legally, the Republic of Albania to intervene by joining Kosovo and the Liberators in defending the case that will have to be made on appeal.

Everyone must work together and with all means (legal defense, international experts, diplomacy etc) so that this decision is overturned on appeal. Not because the Croats, 15 years ago, achieved this in their case, but because we have justice on our side and because this decision is a national tragedy that must be overturned at all costs. The Kosovo Specialist Chambers should not be overturned, but the shameful decision they gave must be overturned, because an act of judgment that convicts the liberators in the name of the people of Kosovo can by no means stand. The verses created years ago of the poem ‘Çlirimtar’ sound as if they were written for this day.

No one loves war, for every war brings only victims,

but you struck me and I took the rifle, and showed you that here there are brave men.

When I wore the uniform, I was conscious of death,

And a brave mother said to me one word, o my son how handsome you are.

Enemy executioner, o faithless, o soulless and shameless,

in this Kosovo you hope for, do you know that you have opened 13 thousand graves?

1432 doves of freedom, do you know that you killed them o black Slav,

but what harm did they do to you, when they were still just children.

When I stood up to hear the sentence, I was quite prepared,

I laughed and did not avert my gaze, before you sold-out court.

But how could I not laugh o old man, but who wrote those words for you,

in the name of which people are you convicting me, when that people gave birth to me.

My lands are all heart, they don’t become two for we are one,

our freedom has one name, only three letters KLA.

This act of judgment may convict four liberators, but no court seal has the power to decide alone what a people will remember. And history has shown that Kosovo has never forgotten nor ever abandoned its sons. Therefore, that act of judgment must be overturned. Period!