Amnesty Seeks Justice for Killed Kosovo Protesters

The international rights watchdog Amnesty International has urged the UN Special Representative in Kosovo to persuade the UN mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, to apologize for the "failure to protect the lives of Mon Balaj and Arben Xheladini ... and provide the complainants with full reparation for the damage suffered".

In a statement issued on Friday, Amnesty said that the UN mission should "take further steps to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice."

Balaj and Xheladini were killed on February 10, 2007, during a demonstration organized by the opposition Vetëvendosje party after Romanian police serving in the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, fired rubber bullets. Others were seriously injured.

An UNMIK internal investigation in 2007 established that the men had been killed by out-of-date rubber bullets - the rubber had perished, revealing the steel ball beneath - fired directly at demonstrators by some of the Romanian police squad.

The families of Balaj and Xheladini, together with two other injured men, were initially offered compensation in relation to material damages through an internal UN procedure in 2009.

But no other forms of reparation have been offered to the survivors and families of the deceased and no independent criminal investigation into the killings has been opened in Kosovo, Amnesty said.

An investigation by a military prosecutor in Romania was closed in 2009 without identifying the perpetrators.

Relatives of Balaj and Xheladini, as well as two of those who suffered injuries in the rally, then complained to the HRAP, Human Rights Advisory Panel, established in 2006 to examine complaints about human rights violation by UNMIK.

In March 2015, the HRAP said the UNMIK had failed to...

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