190 Orthodox churches ruined in Kosovo since 1999 - Russian expert (Klinton/Bin Ladin legacy)

Kosovar Deputy Takes the Stand

Defiant KLA veteran defends “liquidation” of suspected traitors and Serb collaborators.

By Michael Farquhar in The Hague (TU No 393, 11-Feb-05)

Urbane Kosovar parliamentarian Jakup Krasniqi has become the latest in a string of unwilling Kosovo Liberation Army veterans forced to testify against their former colleagues in The Hague.

He arrived in court this week subject to a subpoena, carrying a stack of paperwork that he hoped might go towards vindicating the three accused.

“Even today I believe that the KLA ... did not commit the crimes for which it is accused,” he told the court. “And I don’t see any reason for its members to be here in the dock.”

He was speaking at the trial of Fatmir Limaj, Isak Musliu and Haradin Bala, who are charged with running a brutal prison camp in the village of Lapusnik from May to July 1998, where Serbs and suspected Albanian collaborators were starved, beaten and murdered.

A former KLA spokesperson who is now a senior figure in the Democratic Party of Kosova, PDK, Krasniqi appeared every bit the seasoned public speaker.

And the sharply-dressed and confident witness seized several opportunities to air his talents in support of his former comrades, claiming the evidence against them was politically motivated.

However, the prosecutors will have been grimly satisfied to hear his unflinching defence of the fact that, from as early as 1997 and through the period referred to in the indictment, the KLA led a campaign to “liquidate” Albanians who were suspected of collaborating with the Belgrade regime.

Prosecutors spent a large part of the February 10 session presenting the witness with a series of KLA communiques published in the Albanian language press from late 1997. In these, the Albanian rebels claimed credit for attacks not just on Serb forces but also on Albanians who were said to have been working for them.

In one such document, from March 1998, prosecution lawyers had highlighted and blown up a single sentence, “Death to enemies and traitors.”

Putting on his glasses to pore through the communiques, Krasniqi argued that they had been produced at the time as propaganda and have no place in a court of law as evidence of what was happening on the ground.

But he railed against the kind of “collaborators” they referred to.

“[The Serb regime] couldn’t function in Kosovo only through its police and soldiers,” he told the court. “[Its] apparatus extended its tentacles to all [areas] of public administration. They ruled in Kosovo with the help of collaborators, the people who served the police and soldiers.”

And he told the court that the KLA had dealt with traitors as it saw fit.

“The KLA constantly warned [these] people to withdraw from such activities and not to undermine the liberation war. In cases when such persons did great damage to the Albanian people... the operational wing of the KLA killed [them],” he said.

“Such people did not deserve a better fate for serving the most criminal regime seen in Europe since the Second World War.”

When prosecutors asked Krasniqi how it was determined who was a collaborator, he expressed conviction that all those killed were guilty, insisting, “Even the children were well aware of that [fact] in the villages where they lived.” But he confirmed that it hadn’t been an option at the time to put them on trial.

Prosecutors claim many people who were in fact opposed to the Serb regime were labelled “collaborators” simply because they had business dealings or social contact with ethnic Serbs.

Krasniqi protested that this aspect of the KLA’s activities should not be given undue weight.

“To try to [paint] the KLA as an army that fought against the Albanians and not the Belgrade regime does not serve the truth and has nothing to do with the truth,” he told the court.

But, notwithstanding his reluctance to incriminate his former comrades, it seems Krasniqi’s testimony so far may have strengthened the case against them.

The existence of a wider campaign against suspected traitors can only make the story told in the indictment seem more plausible. It will also help to show that any crimes that did take place in Lapusnik were part of a “widespread or systematic” attack on the civilian population – a necessary condition if the accused are to be found guilty of crimes against humanity.

Krasniqi also spoke about the history of the KLA, confirming the prosecution’s story that the organisation broke with the mainstream Democratic League of Kosovo in the mid-Nineties because of frustration with its tactic of passive resistance. Prosecutors hope to prove that some KLA kidnappings of Albanian “collaborators” were in fact linked to political disputes.

The witness also confirmed the – now relatively uncontroversial – fact that by 1998 the KLA had a general staff and a system of operational zones. In order to bring war crimes charges to bear, prosecutors must show that the movement the Belgrade government was fighting in mid-1998 was, at least in a broad sense, an “organised armed force”.

Krasniqi’s testimony is set to continue next week, when counsel for the accused will also have a chance to put questions to the witness.

bump

March in Kosovo.

Joan & DTA, don't miss post 1.

Ma Bell, stay safe.

Already posted here.

Krasniqi also spoke about the history of the KLA, confirming the prosecution’s story that the organisation broke with the mainstream Democratic League of Kosovo in the mid-Nineties because of frustration with its tactic of passive resistance.

A by-product of the Dayton Accords on Bosnia. Under Rugova, the Kosovar Albanians had declared indepndence, held elections, and formed a government in the period 1990-92 and then followed a passive resistance strategy. However, when the Dayton Accords concluded in 1995 and did not address the Kosovo situation, some Kosovar Albanians decided they should abandon their peace strategy and commence an armed struggle as had the Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnians--who had each gained their independence from Belgrade; ergo the KLA.

And this leads up to the trickiness of final status negotiations in Kosovo. Whatever is decided there can have a significant impact on expectations and courses of action by other groups in the area--whether it be Republika Srpska, west Macedonia, Montenegro, the Presevo Valley, or Serbia's other province of Vojvodina.

Albania and the terrorist organizations invaded Yugoslavia and Clinton bombed the Christians for the Islamists who wanted to again take over Europoe from the soft underbelly. Clinton's payoff was that Sadaam Hussein agreed to parade out the Republican Guard every time an impeachment vote came up and create scream diversionary headlines for the MSM. The United States under Clinton, Albright and the leftist lackey Rubin killed the Christians who pulled your fathers out of downed planes and got them back to you. At the same time these world socialists, the corrupt Clinton-Albright axis rewarded and killed for the same fascist Islamist terrorists who presented Hitler with fully equipped SS Divisions, massacred Greek and Yugoslav civilians and tossed Jews up the chimneys as these Muslims crawled up each others backs to run the concentration camps. Even the Washington Post...page 57 and 58.... right after Christmas before the Yugoslavians reacted, same week, ran a double truck spread on how the Islamist terrorists from all the usual terror states had invaded Yugoslavia, an organized invasion force 18,000 terrorists through Albania alone and were machine-gunning Serb kids at Christmas Parties....like in Tel Aviv now....and slaughtering people on local TV as they took over TV stations and broadcast the executions....sound familiar?....Clinton/Albright/Rubin/Clark were in full cahoots with all this....MSM forgot this truth as soon as they too started lying about what was really happening in Yugoslavia for the corrupt Clinton Regime. The lying Wesley Clark later admitted the bombing of electric grids, hospitals and civilian factories was because they could not face the Yugoslavs directly and decided on a campaign of civilian terror to cow the Yugoslavians. The European spineless asses went along wholeheartedly with this just as they welcomed Chamberlain and Quisling and Petain....hell, we'll do anything to pay you not to hurt US....anything to appease fascist Islamists who had joined the Axis in two separate world wars....and the Marxist europeans ...look what is happening now in the Low Countries, Islamists driving native citizens out in mass migrations to Canada, Australia and New Zealand... and taking over....

This will be outed as the most cowardly and egregious thing the corrupt Clintons were allowed to do through MSM propaganda and widespread lying that continues today...Clinton sold our security for fascist Islamist support...and then we paid with the WTC... as long a as I can post...I will out and refute the lies of what went on in Kosovo as long as I am here...Yugoslavia for the valiant and mistreated Yogoslavians....the whining murder as usual thieving Muslims in Yugoslavia can get their sympathy from someone other than me

You can't possibly be that naive about Muslims. I've had to patrol through western Makedonia, which is Albanian muslim and pacifist is not something they are. Besides, Kosovo is only the Serbian homeland, so why should they care?

I surely hope you have the same attitude when the Mexicans start agitating for the break up of our SW.

jb6, from the UN meeting last week I notice NONE OF THE STANDARDS HAVE BEEN MET. All plan & no action = NO 'REAL PROGRESS' IN THE PAST 3 MONTHS! Who will vote on final status...the Security Council?

25/2/2005
Kosovo: Standards For Final Status Talks Not Reached

"A tough and gloomy appraisal of the progress of Kosovo was published by the UN this week. None of the standards which need to be achieved before the UN administered province can have a final status have yet been fulfilled, including the all important building of trust between the majority ethnic Albanians and the minority Serb community. The standards include such matters as democratic institutions, minority rights and an impartial legal system.

The report does acknowledge that some what it calls 'noteworthy concrete steps' but concludes that while work on the standards has intensified and while some elements of the Kosovo Standards Implementation Plan have been completed, insufficient progress has been achieved in many areas. The UN has run Kosovo since NATO forces drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999.

"It cannot be over emphasized that forward momentum depends on the Provisional Institutions (local government), political leaders and people from all communities actually delivering real progress on the standards," says the report. It says there were no indications during the (three-month) reporting period whether the policies adopted will be fully implemented and, to the extent that they are, whether they will diminish Kosovo Serb unwillingness to engage in the Provisional Institutions. Serb participation in the elections last October was very poor.

Euro constitution signed, not sealed (666 one month trilogy; 2nd seal today October 29)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1262039/posts

I guess this was the UN exit plan, the exit of Serbs from their homeland.

You can't possibly be that naive

jb6, post 5 is history, not opinion--it's what happened. After the loss of autonomy under Milosevic, the Albs tried a shadow government & peaceful resistance in Kosovo under Rugova--the person they elected as president. However, when their situation was ignored at the Dayton Accord in 95, the KLA was formed by those who decided that a pacifist strategy would not work. It started slow & small until two events--the collapse of Albania next door in 97 let loose a flood of looted weapons & the 1998 Jashari family massacre in Drenica galvanized popular support for the KLA.

I've had to patrol through western Makedonia

When & in what capacity? I spent quite a bit of time there myself.

This oughta be good...

I surely hope you have the same attitude when the Mexicans start agitating for the break up of our SW.

Not a good analogy unless the federal government removes the governor of New Mexico & replaces him and all the other Hispanic elected officials with Anglos to include Anglos from Washington; fires the Hispanic people from the courts & local governments & the police & fire departments; brings in judges & police from out of state to replace them and arrests Hispanics on trumped up charges & holds them for years; fires the Hispanic teachers & either replaces them with Anglos or just closes the schools; beats up and arrests the families of anyone who resists; and when trying to stop the utterly predictable revolt those actions bring on, responds to attack by burning down the nearest town and sending the inhabitants into the hills to live. When the U.S. government starts doing those things in New Mexico, then start making your Kosovo = the SW USA analogy.

As Jesse Helms pointed out, a better analogy for Kosovo revolt against oppressive rule from Belgrade is the American Revolution. In Senator Helms's speech at the United Nations in January of 2000 , he said this about Kosovo:

We are endowed with those "inalienable rights," as Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence, not by kings or despots, but by our Creator. The sovereignty of nations must be respected. But nations derive their sovereignty - their legitimacy - from the consent of the governed. Thus, it follows, that nations can lose their legitimacy when they rule without the consent of the governed; they deservedly discard their sovereignty by brutally oppressing their people. Slobodan Milosevic cannot claim sovereignty over Kosovo when he has murdered Kosovars and piled their bodies into mass graves. Neither can Fidel Castro claim that it is his sovereign right to oppress his people. Nor can Saddam Hussein defend his oppression of the Iraqi people by hiding behind phony claims of sovereignty.

Seems you're OK with giving the Muhammedans independence after they've murdered Serbs by the dozens, eh? Typical.

Put murderers in jail. Final status of Kosovo to be as determined in the negotiations with the twin goals of regional stability and human rights for all Kosovars of whatever ethnicity or religion.

About 200 Orthodox churches, mostly 10th-13th century architectural monuments, which survived the 500 years-long Turkish yoke, have been destroyed in Kosovo since the KFOR international peacekeeping force and police units arrived in Kosovo in 1999

This time they're playing for keeps, and have powerful allies in the west.

Great post. Thanks.