Xhorxhina BamiPristinaBIRNMarch 27, 202317:06The first witness in the case against Pjeter Shala at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague claimed that his father was beaten and given electric shocks by the guerrilla commander at a detention site in Albania.
Pjeter Shala at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in February. Photo: EPA-EFE/PIROSCHKA VAN DE WOUW/POOL.
The first witness in the war crimes trial of former Kosovo Liberation Army member Pjeter Shala, known by the nom de guerre ‘Commander Wolf’, testified on Monday that his father was tortured by Shala personally at a KLA detention site at the Kukes Metal Factory in Albania in 1999.
“My father was held for some time in Kukes Metal Factory, where Pjeter Shala, personally, used physical violence, electrocution, blows with axes and massive beating against my father and other detainees,” the protected witness told the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague.
He testified that his father was taken by men in KLA uniforms to the Kukes Metal Factory and held for around two weeks.
He said that his father, an ethnic Albanian, had worked as police officer in the Yugoslav police for 35 years and was a supporter of Kosovo’s first President Ibrahim Rugova’s peaceful movement, which became the Democratic League of Kosovo political party.
He added that father had been pressurised to take retirement in 1997 by the Yugoslav regime because he was an ethnic Albanian.
The witness said that when his father returned from the KLA detention facility, “his condition was terrible”, with dried blood on his forehead.
“My father had trauma… he was destroyed because of his detention in Kukes,” the witness told the court, adding that “his health deteriorated… he lost his sight”.
Citing case documents, Shala’s lawyer Jean-Louis Gilissen insisted however that the defendant did not give the witness’s father electric shocks.
Shala has pleaded not guilty to all charges. His lawyer Gilissen had argued that the case against him is “based on hearsay”.
He is accused of direct involvement in the arbitrary detention, cruel treatment, torture and murder of prisoners held at the Kukes Metal Factory in Kukes in Albania, which the prosecution claims was used by the KLA as a detention centre.
According to the prosecution, 18 people were detained, interrogated and abused at the factory between approximately May 17, 1999 and June 5, 1999. The victims, mostly Kosovo Albanians but also some Roma people, were allegedly detained for collaborating with Serbia or opposing the KLA.
The indictment names two other KLA ex-fighters, Sabit Geci and Xhemshit Krasniqi, as members of a “joint criminal enterprise” along with Shala, although neither has yet been charged.
The prosecution claims that Shala and the other men killed one of the detainees on or around June 4 or 5, 1999.
The Specialist Chambers are part of Kosovo’s judicial system but are located in the Netherlands and staffed by internationals.
They were set up in 2015 by the Kosovo parliament, acting under pressure from the country’s Western allies, who believe Kosovo’s own justice system is not robust enough to try KLA cases and protect witnesses from intimidation, after previous trials at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal were marred by witness-tampering.
The so-called ‘Special Court’ is highly unpopular in Kosovo, where it is seen as unfairly targeting Kosovo Albanian freedom fighters rather than the Serbian perpetrators of the majority of the war crimes that were committed in 1998-99.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
