‘Fake War Veterans’ Case Causes Long-Term Recriminations in Kosovo

"We are in a pandemic era, and people are dying every day in spite of their age and health. I am afraid I might die without my status being resolved," he said. "My family doesn't deserve this humiliation."

Muhamet Lani is one of around 19,000 people who it is claimed falsely applied for KLA war veteran status, which bestows certain benefits. The contested process of verifying those who applied became a huge scandal in Kosovo and has led to a long-running court case.

The effort to establish the real number of people who took up arms to fight for the KLA began with the adoption of legislation in 2011, and the following year, a government commission to verify veterans started work.

In 2016, the government verification commission issued a list containing 46,000 names of people who it said had been KLA members.

But in 2017, an investigation of the list caused special prosecutor Elez Blakaj to draw up an indictment which alleged that 19,000 of those named on the commission's list did not really fight for the KLA. His indictment claimed that paying these 'fake veterans' benefits had cost the state over 68 million euros.

Blakaj then resigned, claiming he was threatened by "known and unknown people" who wanted him to drop the probe, and left Kosovo for the US.

He also alleged that 2,000 more names had been inexplicably added to the list of allegedly fake veterans after he quit his job in 2018. One of those names was Muhamet Lani.

'Commanders have abused the numbers'

War veteran Muhamet Lani. Photo courtesy of Muhamet Lani.

In 2018, Kosovo's Special Prosecution indicted 12 members of the government's verification commission over the claims that thousands of people who never fought in the 1998-99 war had...