The Ambassador of Kosovo to Skopje, Gjergj Dedaj has been contacted by The Hague- based Specialist Prosecutor’s Office on Friday evening.
“On Friday, January 22, 2021, in the late hours, I was contacted by the prosecutor of the Special Court in The Hague, by phone! The purpose of this call, according to them, was to notify me with the appointment of the prosecutor of the case, as they told me, without specifying what the case is about,” Dedaj wrote on Facebook.
Dedaj said that among others, he was asked by the prosecutor if he had received any threats or concerns.
“I informed them that our biggest concern, for 22 years now, is the failure to uncover Serbian crime against dozens of members of my family, as well as the failure to uncover the massacre of Meja of Gjakova, where Serbian forces on April 27, 1999, brutally killed over 380 innocent Albanian civilians, although no one was arrested by Serbs, for this massacre against humanity!” Dedaj wrote.
Dedaj said he is ready, “despite the will” to answer the Specialist Chambers and testify “the just, epic liberation war” of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
In July 2020, Dedaj told Kosovo’s public broadcaster that he had already testified about a former disagreement he had with the KLA.
“I have been questioned as a witness [already],” Dedaj told then Kosovo’s public broadcaster, RTK, adding, “I told them I am always ready because both Kosovo and the KLA are clean”.
SPO is investigating war crimes allegedly committed by KLA members during wartime, 1998- 2000.
KLA senior officials have been indicted so far. Among others, former President Hashim Thaci, former parliament speakers Jakup Krasniqi and Kadri Veseli and former Vetevendoje MP Rexhep Selimi are facing war crimes charges while being held in detention facilities in The Hague.
The Kosovo war crimes court, composed of the Specialist Chambers and the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague, was established by the Kosovo parliament at the insistence of the international community in August 2015.
It followed a 2011 Council of Europe report in which Swiss Senator Dick Marty addresses the alleged crimes of “members of the Kosovo Liberation Army against ethnic minorities and political rivals” from January 1998 until December 2000.
