Kosovo's Haradinaj Held in France on Serbian Warrant

Former PM and AAK leader Ramush Haradinaj was detained on Wednesday by police in eastern France on a flight from Pristina on the basis of a Serbian arrest warrant that alleges he committed war crimes while he was a guerrilla commander with the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, during the war in Kosovo.

His family confirmed the arrest on Wednesday to Kosovo's public broadcaster RTK.

Avni Arifi, an official from his Alliance for the Future of Kosovo party, AAK, wrote on Facebook that their leader was arrested in Basel - at the border between Switzerland, France and Germany - based on an international warrant issued by Serbia and in part blamed the Kosovo government.

"The detention of Haradinaj in France based on a charge of Serbia from 2004 is a final product of negotiations of the Kosovo's Government with Serbia.

"Only these kinds of products can come out of these negotiations. This is the era of Isa [Mustafa, Prime Minister] and of Hashim [Thaci, President of Kosovo]," wrote Arifi.

"After receiving the information, the Ministry of Justice is coordinating with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Kosovo Police and the Ambassador of Kosovo in France and, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has sent a letter to Ministry of Justice in France with the request for the immediate release of Mr Haradinaj," the Kosovo government said in one of its first reactions.

This is not the first time that the former Prime Minister and former KLA commander has been arrested based on Serbian warrant. In 2015, he was arrested in Slovenia, also on Serbian allegations that he committed war crimes during the 1998-99 war.

The Serbian war crimes prosecution was investigating Haradinaj in three cases, accusing him of the killing of at least 60...