Kosovo Fires Intelligence Chief Over ‘Raid on President’s Safe’

Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti, in coordination with acting Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani, on Thursday dismissed the chief of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, KIA, Kreshnik Gashi, allegedly for trying to obtain confidential documents from the President's office.

Gashi was dismissed as KIA chief after an incident in which a KIA inspector was allegedly found at the President's office on November 6, trying to obtain confidential information from the safe, together with former intelligence chief Driton Gashi, who was the secretary of the recently resigned president, Hashim Thaci; he stepped down recently to deal with war crime charges in the Hague concerning the Kosovo independence war.

"There was coordination and full agreement between acting President Vjosa Osmani, and Prime Minister Hoti on relieving the KIA director of his duties," a media advisor to President Osmani, Bekim Kupina, told BIRN.

On the first day of her three-day official visit to Albania on Thursday, Osmani, also speaker of the Kosovo Assembly, told the TV channel Euronews Albania that she knew the circumstances.

"I know the reasons [for the dismissal] but this is a sensitive process, so I don't think it is right for me to speak in detail - it was a process that was discussed and coordinated earlier," she said.

Another Osmani adviser, Faton Peci, however, told Kosovo TV channel Klan Kosovo that on November 6, he found Driton Gashi in the President's office trying to "open the safe" ahead of a suspected raid by EU officials.

Peci said Driton Gashi had warned that officers from the EU rule-of-law mission, EULEX, were about to raid the office.

"We moved to the office of the Speaker and canceled some meetings. While we were discussing in the office of...