THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Hashim Thaci, who resigned as Kosovo’s president to face prices alongside with ruin, torture and persecution, will accumulate his first court docket appearance earlier than a clutch at a special court docket within the Netherlands on Monday, the court docket announced Friday.
Thaci, 52, served as a guerrilla chief at some level of Kosovo’s battle for independence from Serbia within the dead 1990s, earlier than rising to political prominence within the aftermath of the warfare that killed extra than 10,000 folks.
A world prosecutor has indicted Thaci and other frail guerilla leaders on 10 prices of crimes in opposition to humanity and battle crimes for his management of opponents with the Kosovo Liberation Military who are accused of illegally imprisoning, abusing and murdering captured opponents and perceived traitors at some level of the battle.
Thaci insists he is innocent.
Attend in Kosovo officials of the Particular Prosecutor’s Place of job raided his house map the capital Pristina and these of the assorted folks indicted.
At the court docket appearance Monday, a pre-trial clutch will likely be obvious Thaci’s rights are revered and that he understands the prices, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers court docket said in a assertion.
Thaci stood down as Kosovo’s president on Thursday earlier than being flown to the court docket’s detention unit.
He said he wanted to guard in opposition to what he called attempts to rewrite historical past. “Kosovo has been the sufferer. Serbia has been the aggressor,” he said.
The overall public who died within the 1998-1999 battle in Kosovo were ethnic Albanians, and 1,641 folks are peaceable unaccounted for. A 78-day NATO air campaign in opposition to Serbian troops ended the stopping.
The formation of the court docket and prosecutor’s set up of abode of industrial adopted a 2011 file by the Council of Europe, a human rights body, that included allegations that KLA opponents trafficked human organs taken from prisoners and killed Serbs and fellow ethnic Albanians. The organ harvesting allegations are no longer included within the indictment in opposition to Thaci.
In 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia, a slide that Serbia refuses to take into story.
Ties between Kosovo and Serbia dwell tense, no topic 9 years of negotiations mediated by the European Union and supported by the US.
The indictment used to be announced in June when Thaci used to be en path to a assembly at the White Residence with Serb counterpart Aleksandar Vucic. That assembly used to be held with Kosovo’s prime minister as a replacement in September.
The European Union mission in Kosovo and member states’ representatives welcomed Thaci’s resignation and the cooperation that he and the assorted indicted leaders showed with the court docket.
“We now beget got strongly supported the institution of the Specialist Chambers, an integral half of Kosovo’s Rule of Legislation arrangement, and must continue to attain so until the Chambers’ mission, which Kosovo has moreover dedicated to, is fulfilled,” the mission said in a assertion. “That is the largest for the consolidation of Kosovo’s European standpoint.”
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Associated Press writer Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, contributed to this file.
