Nazif Mehmeti, a former commander with the Kosovo Liberation Army’s military police force, was interviewed for two days as a war crimes suspect by the Hague-based Specialist Prosecutor’s Office.
Nazif Mehmeti, a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s military police force in the guerrilla force’s wartime ‘Llapi Zone’, was interviewed as a suspect on Tuesday and Wednesday in Pristina by war crimes prosecutors from The Hague, his lawyer told BIRN.
Mehmeti’s lawyer, Tahir Rrecaj, declined to give any more details about his client’s interview with the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, which is probing wartime and post-war crimes.
“I can only say that he was interviewed about the period from the 10th to 11th of October 1998 until the end of the war, when he was commander of the military police for the Llapi Zone,” Rrecaj said.
Two other senior KLA figures, Rrustem Mustafa and Sami Lushtaku, travelled to The Hague earlier this month to be interviewed at the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, but Mehmeti was interviewed in Kosovo.
However Rrecaj said that “this does not have any legal importance” and suggested that the intention could have been to save money.
Mehmeti already has a war crimes conviction. He was convicted of war crimes against civilians by a Kosovo court in 2013 and sentenced to three years in prison, alongside Mustafa and another man, Latif Gashi.
An appeals court later upheld the verdicts convicting the trio, who were known collectively as the ‘Llapi Group’.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers and the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office are part of Kosovo’s legal system but are based in the Netherlands, and are tasked with investigating and trying suspects for crimes committed during and just after the Kosovo war, from 1998 to 2000.
The so-called ‘special court’ is expected to indict senior KLA figures for alleged crimes including killings, abductions, illegal detentions and sexual violence.
The balkaninsight
