Former senior guerrilla Lahi Brahimaj told BIRN on Monday evening that he has been invited for questioning by the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague, which is investigating crimes committed in Kosovo during and after the war.
“Yes, I have been summoned,” Brahimaj said, adding that he will accept the prosecutors’ invitation for interview.
“I don’t want to say when I received the invitation or when I will be giving my testimony, but I can confirm I will go,” he said.
When asked if he was invited as a witness or a suspect, he responded: “As one of the KLA’s leaders.”
During the war in Kosovo, Brahimaj was an official at the general headquarters of the KLA.
In November 2012, he was acquitted at a retrial by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, alongside his nephew Ramush Haradinaj and another ex-KLA man, Idriz Balaj.
Prosecutors had alleged that they tortured and killed Serbs and ethnic Albanians who were deemed to have collaborated with Serbs at a KLA-run camp at Jablanica in 1998.
The Hague court had initially acquitted Haradinaj and Balaj of all charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2008, but sentenced Brahimaj to six years in prison for cruel treatment and torture.
In 2010, the court’s appeals chamber concluded that witnesses had been intimidated and that the prosecution had not been given the chance to question two potentially crucial witnesses, and sent the case for a partial retrial.
Brahimaj is the latest in a series of former KLA figures who have been called for questioning this year by the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office.
The Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers has yet to issue any indictments, however.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers and the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office are part of Kosovo’s legal system but are based in The Netherlands.
They are expected to investigate and try suspects for crimes committed from 1998 to 2000 including killings, abductions, illegal detentions and sexual violence.
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