Serbia Detains Former Kosovo Guerrilla as War Crimes Suspect

A Serbian police officer at the Kosovo-Serbia crossing point in Merdare, December 2012. Photo: EPA/KUSHTRIM TERNAVA.

Belgrade Higher Court told BIRN on Tuesday that it has remanded Hasan Dakaj in custody for 30 days after he was arrested for alleged war crimes against civilians.

The court said that Dakaj was remanded in custody on January 6 “due to the existence of circumstances that indicate a risk of escape”.

The Serbian Prosecutor’s Office for War Crimes told BIRN that Dakaj is suspected of committing crimes against the civilian population during the Kosovo war when he was “a member of the so-called KLA”.

The Prosecutor’s Office said that “together with as yet unknown members [of the KLA], [Dakaj] carried out the kidnapping and murder of civilians”.

Kosovo media reported on Saturday that Dakaj was arrested on Merdare border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia while on his way to Italy.

Dakaj’s family lawyer, Xhevdet Smakiqi, wrote on Facebook on Sunday that “former KLA member Hasan Dakaj is alleged by the Serbian Prosecutor’s Office to have committed war crimes in 1999 as a 19-year-old”.

“Hasan Dakaj was assigned a lawyer from Serbia, and in an interview with the Serbian prosecutor, Hasan Dakaj declared that he was not guilty… [and said that] that he was not even at these locations suggested by the Serbian prosecutor’s office and that he was mistaken for someone else”.

Smakiqi claimed that Dakaj’s arrest was political – “to take revenge on the members of the KLA for achieving independence”.

On Friday, Kosovo’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora announced that the Kosovo liaison office in Serbia will try to receive permission to visit Dakaj in detention, meanwhile they have notified the EU office in Serbia, the US and Great Britain embassies in Serbia.

Despite a 2013 agreement on “mutual legal assistance”, brokered by the European Union between Belgrade and Pristina, there is little or no cooperation on criminal cases, especially related to war crimes.

In March last year, Kosovo’s Justice Minister Albulena Haxhiu said she had written to her Serbian counterpart Maja Popovic asking for Nezir Mehmetaj and Petrit Dula, who have both been charged with war crimes by Serbia, to be sent back to Kosovo, despite the lack of legal cooperation between the two countries.

She had also said in a post on Facebook that the legal processes in the cases against the two men have involved “serious human rights violations for years”.

Kosovo’s Justice Minister Albulena Haxhiu claimed in March last year that cases against two other Kosovo Albanian men arrested by Serbia had been marred by “serious human rights violations”.

One of the men, Nezir Mehmetaj, was arrested in 2020, also at the Merdare border crossing, and has been in detention in Serbia ever since.

Mehmetaj is accused of participation in war crimes against civilians in the village of Rudice in the Klina municipality of Kosovo in June and July 1999. The Serbian prosecution claims he was involved in killing seven people and burning and looting ten houses belonging to non-Albanians in Rudice as a member of the KLA.

He is also accused of harassing members of the Roma and Egyptian ethnic minorities in Rudice. Mehmetaj has denied the accusations, saying he was not in Kosovo during the war in 1999.

The other Kosovo man, Petrit Dula, was initially found guilty by Belgrade Higher Court in November 2022 of committing a war crime by assaulting a civilian in a village near the town of Djakovica/Gjakova in Kosovo in June 1999 while he was a KLA member.

Dula was then acquitted in April 2023.