Kosovo Orders Retrial of Wartime Guerrilla Unit Commander

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.

Known during wartime as 'The Red Apple', 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.

Shala, who pleaded not guilty, told the court that he did not commit crimes against civilians during the war.

"I am proud I was a soldier of the KLA, and during the war I did not deal with the civilian population, neither Albanian nor Serb," he insisted.

Shala was invited for interview in January last year by the Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor's Office, which is probing alleged wartime and post-war crimes by former KLA members.

He refused to comply and went into hiding in Albania, telling BIRN that he did not trust the Kosovo Specialist Chambers - the so-called 'Special Court' which is expected to try former KLA members indicted by the Specialist Prosecutor's Office.

He also failed to appear at a hearing in his war crime trial in Prizren.

However, after he was arrested in May, he was subsequently questioned for two days by the Specialist Prosecutor's Office, BIRN has learned.