Kosovo Parliament Votes for New War Crimes Court

The Kosovo parliament in session.

MPs voted by 82 to five on Monday in favour of constitutional changes that will allow the establishment of the new war crimes court, under mounting pressure from Kosovo’s US and EU backers after the failure of an earlier vote in parliament last month.

Late on Monday night, MPs in the 120-seat parliament also approved two draft laws required to set up the new court.

Prime Minister Isa Mustafa told parliament before the vote that Kosovo had to establish the special court in order to fulfil its obligations to its Western partners and because local courts had not managed to ensure justice.

“Unfortunately, the failure of the rule of law, in many cases, has influenced the international community’s loss of trust that we can develop this process in our country,” Mustafa said.

Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Hashim Thaci said that it was not an easy decision but it was necessary.

“This challenge should not be an obstacle which will cost our country a lot, but instead [a part of our] euro-Atlantic integration,” Thaci said.

The court has provoked anger in Kosovo, with veterans’ associations and opposition parties claiming that it is an insult to the Kosovo Liberation Army’s armed struggle to escape Serbian control during the 1998-99 conflict.

During what became a heated debate lasting the entire day, MP Valdet Bajrami from the Initiative for Kosovo opposition party said that it would put the victims on trial and not the aggressor, Serbia.

“You are raising your hand today to vote on a court that will try the liberators that brought freedom,” Bajrami told lawmakers.

MP Glauk Konjufca from the Vetevendosje (Self-Determination Movement) opposition party also said the court would be intrinsically biased.

“We are completely convinced that history shows that Serbia was the occupier, but here the liberators are being judged. There is nowhere in the world where a court deals only with one side,” Konjufca said.

So-called ‘specialised chambers’ will be created to deal with allegations that Kosovo Liberation Army fighters were involved in the killings, abductions, illegal detentions and persecution of Serbs, Roma and Kosovo Albanians believed to be collaborators with the Serbian regime.

The allegations first surfaced in a report published in 2011 by Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty, who claimed that crimes against civilians such as kidnapping, torture and organ-harvesting were committed by members of the KLA during the conflict.

The report implicated current Foreign Minister Thaci, the former political head of the KLA. He strongly denied any wrongdoing.

US diplomats had warned that a failure to vote for the new special court could lead to it being set up by the UN Security Council instead – as has been proposed by Serbia’s ally Russia.