Kosovo Liberation Army

The judging panel in the case against former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Salih Mustafa at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers issued a ruling last year about compensation for victims which noted that Kosovo's Law on the Kosovo Specialist Chambers does not set specific criteria for how compensation can be obtained.

Svetomir Bacevic stands accused of seizing a 60-year-old ethnic Albanian civilian from her home in the village of Bellopje/Belo Polje in Kosovo's Peja/Pec municipality in the summer of 1998, according to the indictment which has been obtained by BIRN.

A protected witness told the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Tuesday that he saw five or six people beating a prisoner who was being held in an improvised detention facility in the village of Zllash/Zlas, some 30 kilometres east of Kosovo's capital Pristina, during the war in 1999.

The appeals chamber at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Wednesday rejected ex-President Hashim Thaci's plea for conditional release from pre-trial detention because there is still a risk that he might abscond.

Halil Berisha, a journalist from Pristina, told the trial of Kosovo Liberation Army War Veterans' Organisation leaders Hysni Gucati and Nasim Haradinaj at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Tuesday how he received the allegedly leaked war crimes case files from the defendants.

US President Joe Biden has nominated retired diplomat Christopher Hill, a veteran of American involvement in the Balkans in the 1990s war years, as his country's new ambassador to Belgrade, the White House announced on Friday.

Hill, whose appointment must be confirmed by the US Senate, has previously been an ambassador in Albania, North Macedonia, Poland, South Korea and Iraq.

Kosovo's negotiator, deputy prime minister Besnik Bislimi, said he asked Serbia to open up its Yugoslav-era military and police files to help find the locations of wartime mass graves of ethnic Albanians.

Serbia has already asked for the archives of the Kosovo Liberation Army to be opened up so that the bodies of Serbs who disappeared can finally be found.

The Serbian Defence Ministry showed the film about the now-disbanded Yugoslav Army 125th Motorised Brigade on Thursday evening in Belgrade to commemorate the 40th anniversary of its establishment, despite claims that it was involved in war crimes during eth Kosovo conflict.

The Victims' Participation Office of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers said in its opening statement at the first trial held at the Hague-based court on Wednesday that the alleged victims of Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA fighters during the 1998-99 war have been intimidated into silence for decades.

Former Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA unit commander Salih Mustafa went on trial at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers on Wednesday, charged with involvement in murder, torture, cruel treatment and arbitrary detentions during the Kosovo war in April 1999.

"Today marks a milestone for this institution and our work," prosecutor Jack Smith said in his opening statement on Wednesday.