Specialist Verdict on Four Former KLA Leaders, Hamza: “A Day of Shame for International Justice”

The leader of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), Bedri Hamza, said today is a difficult day for Kosovo, a dark day, but also a day of shame for international justice.

Hamza said at a press conference that today’s verdict against Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi has brought deep pain and disappointment to all of us.

“A pain and disappointment that we did not expect. Our minds and hearts, first and foremost, are today with Hashim Thaçi, with Kadri Veseli, with Jakup Krasniqi and with Rexhep Selimi and with their families, who for nearly six years have carried the weight of this process. But hurt, disappointed, embittered are we too, all of us, the citizens of Kosovo and all Albanians in the world. The decision pronounced today was not made in the name of the people of Kosovo,” Hamza said.

Read Hamza’s full speech below:

Today is a difficult day for Kosovo. A dark day. But it is also a day of shame for international justice.

Today’s verdict against Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi has brought deep pain and disappointment to all of us.

A pain and disappointment that we did not expect.

Our minds and hearts, first and foremost, are today with Hashim Thaçi, with Kadri Veseli, with Jakup Krasniqi and with Rexhep Selimi and with their families, who for nearly six years have carried the weight of this process.

But hurt, disappointed, embittered are we too, all of us, the citizens of Kosovo and all Albanians in the world.

The decision pronounced today was not made in the name of the people of Kosovo.

The decision pronounced today was made against the people of Kosovo, against the state of Kosovo.

We have followed this process with the belief that in the end justice would be based only on facts, evidence and individual responsibility.

But today we did not see justice.

In The Hague today, our people’s resistance was dealt a heavy blow.

Our people’s sacrifice, who fought for freedom, survival and liberation from the Serbian state regime that killed, expelled and terrorized the Albanians of Kosovo, was insulted.

For us, this verdict is a great injustice, because there they convicted those who dedicated their youth and lives to freedom.

This freedom that we all enjoy today in Kosovo.

Those four were convicted today for everything that has been propagandized about the KLA’s war and for evidence of cases that were closed by UNMIK and EULEX in the two decades after the war.

They were also convicted because they defended the KLA’s war from external factors, which have often been pushed by the Serbian regime itself to extinguish our resistance.

Likewise, that decision is also based on claims and materials that we consider fabricated and fed over the years by the state apparatus and Serbia’s propaganda to criminalize the just war of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

They were convicted, among other things, also because KLA soldiers detained and legitimized Serbs in KLA zones during the war.

Moreover, they were convicted even for cases in which the International Tribunal of The Hague had declared innocence earlier.

Honorable citizens,

This verdict was pronounced today in The Hague. But the history of Kosovo has been written here, with sacrifice, blood and war for freedom.

And it is not rewritten today.

Our history has been written by our people who fought for survival, by thousands of martyrs and fallen, by hundreds of thousands of citizens expelled from their homes and by a historic alliance with the democratic world that, in 1999, put an end to the repression and ethnic cleansing of the Serbian regime in Kosovo.

Those four, during the two years of the war, were also in coordination with our allies, and today those alliances were also convicted.

Today, the citizens of Kosovo are hurt and disappointed by this unjust verdict, which is a heavy blow to the KLA’s war, freedom, independence and the state of Kosovo.

There is no fate of peoples and states more intertwined than the fate of our people and state with their names.

Therefore, today we are all convicted, as a people and as a state.

Today is a difficult day for Kosovo. But today neither our history nor our battle for the truth ends.

The legal process has not ended and the last word of justice has not yet been spoken.

It is not the same thing to prove that crimes were committed during the war and to prove that four specific individuals had a common criminal purpose in committing them.

For each of the accused it must be proven, not only the position held, because a position in a structure cannot replace proof of individual responsibility.

During this process, important testimonies were heard about the real structure and functioning of the KLA.

People who during 1998 and 1999 had direct contact with the KLA, including senior American and NATO representatives, who testified about the decentralized nature of its organization and the limitations of its command-and-control structure.

These testimonies do not by themselves determine the outcome of a judicial process.

But they demand answers: how were they weighed against the conclusion that there was a common criminal purpose formulated and implemented through the KLA’s structures?

How was the real authority of each accused and their individual responsibility determined?

Equally important is another finding of today’s verdict.

The witness issue also requires special attention.

The Panel itself spoke of serious problems with the testimonies of some of them.

Therefore, the different statements must be rigorously examined, how contradictions were treated, and on which testimonies the decisive conclusions for guilt were based.

In the end, all these issues return to a single standard: beyond reasonable doubt.

In criminal law it is not enough that one version of events is possible, or even more convincing than another.

When a person is sentenced to 13, 18 or 25 years in prison, his individual guilt must be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Therefore we expect that on appeal the conclusions on the common criminal purpose, individual responsibility, real authority and control, the assessment of evidence and any factual or legal issue that may have influenced the verdict will be reviewed with full rigor.

Because the right of appeal exists precisely so that a verdict with such grave consequences is once more subjected to the test of the law, of the facts and of the highest standard of justice.

The Democratic Party of Kosovo will stand in support of the just and clean war of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

It will stand in full support of the leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army and will undertake all necessary democratic and legal actions that have to do with these processes.