Gashi

Kosovo's state prosecution on Thursday pledged that a ruling on a criminal investigation into three people will be taken soon - hours after BIRN aired a TV investigation showing the payment of an alleged bribe of 5,000 euros to a prosecutor in Prizren to close a criminal investigation.

Drinking green tea in a café in Pristina, while respecting social distancing, Kosovo writer Shkumbin Gashi tells BIRN that he considers writing a kind of "spiritual therapy … yoga of the mind, a type of meditation".

A French journalist and an American academic have told BIRN that they were lobbied to write positively about "border corrections" and a potential land swap between Kosovo and Serbia.

A group of over 40 civil society organisations in Kosovo said in a joint statement on Thursday that Shkelzen Gashi has been "threatened and insulted in the worst way by the general public, but also by many personalities and politicians including President Hashim Thaci".

Skender Gashi, a Kosovo Albanian, was one of 3,765 deceased Kosovars brought back from around the world for burial in Kosovo between 2017 and 2019, according to data from the country's interior ministry.

Drilon Gashi, a young and unconventional cleric who served for two years as imam at the mosque in the village of Vitomirica in Kosovo's Peja/Pec municipality, said on Thursday that he has been dismissed by the Kosovo Islamic Community after he said he believed the theory of evolution developed by Charles Darwin.

BIRN has learned that an indictment for misuse of office against Driton Gashi was withdrawn only days before he was appointed to head the intelligence agency by President Hashim Thaci and Prime Minister Isa Mustafa on Wednesday .

On February 3, the Pristina Basic Court dismissed an indictment filed in May 2016 against Gashi, then the General Secretary at the Interior Ministry.