The Kosovo war crimes court, known as Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC), has announced that former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi will have their first public hearing before the court on November 10 and 11, respectively.
Veseli’s hearing is set on November 10, at 15:00 in the KSC courtroom in The Hague; Selimi’s hearing is set on November 11, at 11:00, the court announced on Friday.
The indictment against Veseli and Selimi was confirmed on 26 October 2020. They were arrested by the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) on 5 November 2020 and transferred to the KSC’s detention facilities in The Hague on the same day, together with Hashim Thaci.
The hearings will be public, and to broadcast online at https://www.scp-ks.org/en/streaming.
Thaci’s initial appearance will be on Monday, November 9, at 15:00, following that of Jakup Krasniqi at 11:00 on the same day.
The four former KLA leaders have held top political positions in the years after the war with Serbia. Thaci resigned as Kosovo’s President before being arrested and transferred to The Hague; Veseli was Speaker of Parliament and leader of PDK party; Krasniqi was also Speaker of Parliament; and Selimi was the head of the parliamentary group of the largest political party, Vetevendosje.
The indictment charges them with war crimes and crimes against humanity committed from March 1998 through September 1999, during the Kosovo war.
The Kosovo parliament established the war crimes court based in The Hague in August 2015. It came after increasing international pressure following a 2011 Council of Europe report by Swiss Senator Dick Marty, who alleged that members of the KLA had committed crimes against ethnic minorities and political rivals during the war against Serbia.
