Kosovo Liberation Army

For two decades, voters in the town of Skenderaj/Srbica in Kosovo's Drenica Valley have been pledging their support to the Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK and its former leader Hashim Thaci, the wartime political chief of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA who went on to dominate politics in the country in the years after the conflict.

Salih Mustafa, a former Kosovo Liberation Army commander accused of committing war crimes, must remain in detention after a judge said he could interfere with witnesses or escape.

Shehu is one of scores of Albanian army officers who joined the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA in its war against the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police and paramilitaries in 1999.

The Kosovo state prosecution told BIRN on Wednesday that it will appeal against Pristina Basic Court's verdict acquitting ex-premier Agim Ceku and 11 co-defendants of abusing their official positions to add people to a government-approved list of Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA war veterans eligible for benefits.

Pristina Basic Court on Tuesday cleared ex-premier Agim Ceku and 11 co-defendants, including another ex-minister and several ex-MPs, of abusing their official positions to add people to a government-approved list of Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA war veterans eligible for benefits.

Former Kosovo police officer Fadil Syleviqi, 55, was found dead on Friday afternoon on a forest road leading from Pristina to Badovci Lake, police said.

Police said they were informed shortly after 2pm local time that a person with no signs of life was lying on the ground by the road.

His mother Sahide, who was 61 at the time, tried to get to her husband's cousins' house, but she was shot as she walked up the road. Wounded, she remained in the street for almost an hour.

"Some people who were hiding in the basement of a house saw her sitting on the roadside after being shot. It isn't known where she was shot, they only saw she was bleeding," Hasan Metushi said.

A poster in Pristina in July 2020 describing Thaci and Veseli as heroes. Photo: EPA-EFE/VALDRIN XHEMAJ.

It was June 13, 1999, and Uli Reinhardt, a photojournalist from the German news magazine Stern was due to meet his colleague Gabriel Gruener at 6pm in the southern Kosovo city of Prizren.

But Gruener would never arrive for the meeting, and could not be contacted by mobile phone because Kosovo's telecommunications system had been damaged in the war.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers published on Monday a redacted decision by a pre-trial judge confirming an indictment against former President Hashim Thaci and three former fellow guerrilla commanders accusing them of crimes against humanity and war crimes during and after the 1998-99 Kosovo war.