Suva Reka

Prizren Basic Court on Tuesday convicted former Kosovo Liberation Army member, Remzi Shala, known by the nom de guerre Molla e Kuqe (The Red Apple) of committing a war crime by kidnapping an ethnic Albanian man from Duhel, a village in the Suhareka/Suva Reka area, during the Kosovo war.

Kosovo's Institute of Forensic Medicine began a new exhumation of a suspected war grave this week in the mountain village of Koshare/Kosare in the west of the country as the authorities stepped up efforts to find around the remaining missing persons from the 1998-99 war.

The Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor's Office has added fresh war crime charges to the indictment of former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and three other guerilla Kosovo Liberation Army leaders turned politicians who have been awaiting the trial in detention in The Hague since November 2020.

Kosovo Police apprehended, then released, a cameraman in the southern town of Suhareke/Suva Reka filming the eviction of a privatised company put under administration by the Kosovo Privatisation Agency, KPA.

Witness Shefki Bujari, who was the head of the village Duhel/Dulje for many years, told Remzi Shala's retrial at Prizren Basic Court on Wednesday that several murders during the Kosovo war, particularly in his village, could have happened because of personal resentments or suspicions that the victims were collaborating with Serbian forces.

Remzi Shala's lawyer, Natal Bullakaj, told BIRN on Thursday that the Supreme Court has upheld the former guerrilla commander's appeal against his war crime conviction and sent the case for a retrial.

The retrial will be held at Prizren Basic Court, where Shala was originally sentenced in July last year to 14 years in prison.

The court in Prizren on Wednesday sentenced Remzi Shala, a former Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA unit commander known during wartime as 'The Red Apple', to 14 years in prison for committing a war crime.

Shala was convicted of the kidnapping of Haxhi Perteshi from Duhel, a village in the Suhareka/Suva Reka area in 1998. Days after he was seized, Perteshi was found dead.

Fugitive former Kosovo Liberation Army unit commander Remzi Shala, known during wartime as 'The Red Apple', appeared in court in Prizren on Friday after being arrested, but denied he was trying to evade justice.

Shala is a suspect in the kidnapping in 1998 of an ethnic Albanian man who was subsequently killed, and was initially supposed to appear in court in Prizren on January 9.

Photo: EPA/ EDDY LEMAISTRE

The extraordinary parliamentary session was called by the opposition Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, whose leader in parliament, Avdullah Hoti, proposed the motion.

A Kosovo Liberation Army uniform badge. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Adam Jones.

Shala told Pristina-based Klan Kosova TV that he has been invited as a witness and will travel to The Hague on April 17.

Asked why the prosecutors want to interview him, he responded: "I have no idea."