Hashim Thaçi

The Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor's Office has added fresh war crime charges to the indictment of former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and three other guerilla Kosovo Liberation Army leaders turned politicians who have been awaiting the trial in detention in The Hague since November 2020.

In its latest annual report on trends in democracy, published on Wednesday, Freedom House alleged that two veteran political leaders in Kosovo, Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinaj, are among various powerful figures in the country who have criminal connections.

Serbia's chief intelligence service said on Monday it had written to its Swiss counterpart to complain about remarks made by former Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty saying he had been provided with police protection due to death threats from "certain circles of the Serbian intelligence services."

On March 31, Foreign Minister Donika Gervalla-Schwartz said demarcation between Kosovo and Montenegro was still not over, also pointing out that the border has yet to be marked on the ground by state commissions of both countries.

After Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti seemed to dismiss the possibility of Serbs voting in Kosovo for presidential and parliamentary elections in Serbia this Sunday, an opposition party said the move will prove harmful for the country.

The pre-trial judge at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, Nicolas Guillou, extended detention for Hashim Thaci ahead of his trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo.

Judge Guillou turned down a defence request for the release of Thaci, who was one of the wartime leaders of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA.

The newly elected board of the Kosovo public broadcaster, Radio Television of Kosovo, RTK, has dismissed Ngadhnjim Kastrati as director for not performing his duties effectively and for violating RTK law.

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.

He pointed out that the prime minister of the so-called Kosovo, Albin Kurti, endangers Kosovo by taking rash actions, Gazeta Express reports.