Alan Tieger

Hashim Thaci (centre) with Rexhep Selimi behind him in court on Monday. Photo: EPA-EFE/Koen van Weel/Pool.

Using video footage of statements from the 1990s as well as documents found in some of the defendants' homes, lead prosecutor Alan Tieger showed the court KLA communiques and orders for arrests, which he said was evidence that the guerrilla force targeted political opponents.

Defence lawyers of recently-resigned Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and three other former guerrilla fighters turned politicians accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity argued at a status conference at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers on Thursday that the prosecution is trying to restrict the defence's ability to prepare for the trial.

"The challenges in investigating and prosecuting genocide were immense," Alan Tieger, who was in charge of the case against Radovan Karadzic at the UN court in The Hague, told BIRN ahead of the 24th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacres on Thursday.

THE HAGUE - Ratko Mladic was a key figure in the Srebrenica massacre of Muslims and a joint criminal enterprise aimed at forcibly creating a Serb state in large portions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, prosecutors of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said Monday at the beginning of their closing argument, four years after the start of Mladic's trial.

BELGRADE - Alan Tieger, a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), demanded during closing arguments session on Tuesday former Bosnian Serb military commander Radko Mladic to be put behind bars for the rest of his life.

THE HAGUE - Ratko Mladic was a key figure in the Srebrenica massacre of Muslims and a joint criminal enterprise aimed at forcibly creating a Serb state in large portions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, prosecutors of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said Monday at the beginning of their closing argument, four years after the start of Mladic's trial.

Prosecutors began their closing arguments in the trial of Ratko Mladic on Monday at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, insisting that the former Bosnian Serb Army chief enjoyed strong command over forces that carried out genocide during the 1992-95 war.