Kosovo Ex-Premier Haradinaj Arrested Over ‘War Crimes’

Ramush Haradinaj.

Haradinaj was detained on Wednesday at Ljubljana airport over Serbian allegations that he committed crimes while he was a guerrilla commander with the Kosovo Liberation Army during wartime.

The former PM, who is now head of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo party, told BIRN by telephone that the Slovenian authorities had “messed up” by detaining him on the 2004 warrant, which he insisted was not valid.

“I don’t see this as just personally offensive, I see it as being offensive to Kosovo,” Haradinaj said.

“Since 2012 I have travelled to various countries, including the US and European countries, and had no problems,” he added.

A Slovenian court ordered that Haradinaj should be held overnight and his passport confiscated until another hearing on Thursday morning to decide whether he will be freed to return to Pristina, his Alliance for the Future of Kosovo party said.

The party also said that the arrest was an attempt to “smear Haradinaj and his personality” and called for his immediate release.

The Serbian war crimes prosecution is currently investigating Haradinaj in three cases, accusing him of the killing of at least 60 people.

Haradinaj has also been quoted by Kosovo media as saying that the warrant was based on false charges.

“During this trip I went through a couple of airports and everything was fine. They [Slovenians] are like them [Serbs] – they are their brothers,” he said, according to Kosovo newspaper Koha Ditore.

The former KLA commander was acquitted in 2012 by the Hague Tribunal of committing war crimes during the 1998-99 conflict.

The UN-backed court rejected allegations that he was part of a joint criminal enterprise to establish KLA control in western Kosovo through detention camps, and that he and others were responsible for the torture and killing of Serbs and Albanians who were believed to have collaborated with Serbs.

He said at the time that “international justice confirmed that our path to freedom was clean and just”. Serbia however claimed that the acquittal was unfair and the trial was flawed because of problems with witnesses.

Haradinaj, 46, served as prime minister of Kosovo for 100 days from December 2004 until March 2005, before willingly surrendering to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Nicknamed ‘Rambo’ in Kosovo, he is considered by many in the country to be a hero of the war against Slobodan Milosevic’s regime.