War crimes in the Kosovo War

Kosovo's Special Prosecution announced on Wednesday that it has filed an indictment charging a former member of Serbian armed forces, identified only by the initials S.T., with committing crimes against humanity against ethnic Albanian civilians during the Kosovo war.

Kosovo's Special Prosecution announced on Monday that it has filed an indictment charging a former member of the Serbian armed forces, identified only by the initials I.B., with committing war crimes against ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo war.

Prizren Basic Court on Tuesday convicted former Kosovo Liberation Army member, Remzi Shala, known by the nom de guerre Molla e Kuqe (The Red Apple) of committing a war crime by kidnapping an ethnic Albanian man from Duhel, a village in the Suhareka/Suva Reka area, during the Kosovo war.

Kosovo's Special Prosecution announced on Friday that it has filed an indictment charging a Serb ex-policeman, identified only by the initials G.P., with the wartime rape of an ethnic Albanian man.

Officials in Pristina have yet to publicly respond since the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague urged Kosovo to create a new reparation mechanism for war crimes victims in order to ensure "equal treatment between the suspects and accused".

The Kosovo prosecution said on Monday that police have arrested a man identified only by the initials M.D. on suspicion of committing war crimes in the Peja/Pec region of Kosovo in May 1999.

Enver Hoxhaj stops his tractor near to where a Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla unit was based 24 years ago, during the war.

In the pastoral village of Budakova/Budakovo in Kosovo's Suhareka/Suva Reka municipality, Hoxhaj then joins some of his former guerrilla comrades in the garden of a nearby café.

A new report published by the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre on Friday accuses the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor's Office of being "extremely inefficient", while also raising concerns that over a half of the court hearings in war crime trials last year were postponed for COVID-related reasons.

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.

This is because, according to the law, courts should instruct victims in war crime trials to claim compensation in civil proceedings. But this is complicated, officials say.

Compensation from the state can be requested if the victim is unable to get restitution from the convicted defendant or from other sources.