‘People’s Eye’ Lawyer Calls Kosovo Terror Group ‘Fantasy’
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| The Justicle Palace in Pristina | Photo: BIRN |
Nearly one year after Kosovo lawyer and former politician Azem Vllasi was injured at the entrance of his apartment, the Kosovo Special Prosecution Office indicted ten suspected members of the “People’s Eye” organisation on Wednesday.
One of the ten is Murat Jashari, who wounded the former head of the once ruling League of Communists in Kosovo in a shooting incident in March, 2017.
However, Jashari’s lawyer, Fehmie Gashi-Bytyqi, told BIRN that she doubted People’s Eye really existed.
She said her client was treated in a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland before committing the offence – and Jashari simply invented the non-existent “People’s Eye” organisation.
“My client, even though he mentions the organization ‘People’s Eye’, has a very disturbed mental state of mind and I think it is only a made-up thing that has come from his sick mind,” she said. “I doubt that this organization exists.”
On arrest, Jashari, admitted the charge, stating that he was motivated by the alleged damage Vllasi had done to the people of Kosovo during his days in power in the Yugoslav era in the 1980s.
According the Prosecution, on May 15, 2015, members of the criminal organization “People’s Eye “decided in March 2017 to start illegal actions to seriously destabilize or destroy the basic political, constitutional, economic or social structures of the Republic of Kosovo, with attacks and murders of the highest state personalities … considering them traitors to the country”.
It suspects them of committing crimes ranging from rape to the preparation of terrorist acts or offences against constitutional order and the unauthorized ownership, control or possession of weapons.
Among the accused is Sadri Ramabaja, an official of the main opposition Vetevendosje party, who was arrested in October 2017 in Albania while trying to cross the border. Vetevendosje has called it a political arrest, and insists on the innocence of Ramabaja.
The prosecution insists the “People’s Eye” organization had an organized hierarchy, in which each of them had code names and specific duties.
“So, on March 13, 2017 defendant M. J. [Murat Jashari] attempted to kill the defendant Azem Vllasi as a former Kosovo official in the 1980s, who, according to their operational plan, was first ranked on the list as a traitor to the country,” it said.
According to the prosecution, the defendants also set up a fund, called “Freedom of the Fatherland”.
Read more:
‘People’s Eye’ Poses Terrorist Threat, Kosovo President Says
