Guerrilla, Politician, Suspect: The Legal Battles of Kosovo’s Haradinaj

In an unexpected turn of events, Kosovo's Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj held an extraordinary press conference on Friday to announce that he was resigning because he could not be premier at the same time as being a war crimes suspect.

"The honour of the role of prime minister and the state should be preserved and I will never humiliate it. I am going to The Hague as Ramush Haradinaj," he said after being invited for questioning by the Hague-based Specialist Prosecutor's Office, which is tasked with probing crimes allegedly committed by Kosovo Liberation Army members from the beginning of 1998 to the end of 1999.

So far, specialist prosecutor Jack Smith and his team have questioned dozens of former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, but Haradinaj is the biggest name on the list and the first to resign after being summoned as a suspect. He is expected to appear before prosecutors this week.

For most of the political elite in Kosovo, Haradinaj's move was courageous and noble, although many also consider it a tactical move to boost his popularity ahead of the snap elections that are likely to be held in autumn.

But his invitation for questioning should not come as a surprise, considering he was a Kosovo Liberation Army commander in areas where the killings, abductions and torture of Serbs, Roma and Albanians seen as political enemies took place. His name features in most of the documents, reports and investigations that led to the establishment of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, which will try the suspects indicted by the Specialist Prosecutor's Office.

For his part, Haradinaj maintains that his war was just and honorable. He has also been acquitted twice by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY - which many...

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