Interview with Prime Minister Edi Rama about the international trial of the five former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders in The Hague

-Mr. Prime Minister. Tomorrow is an important day for the Albanian nation as an international trial of the five main leaders of the former Kosovo Liberation Army is set to begin at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague. What is your comment on that?

Prime Minister Rama: My comment is a known one. I don’t think there is something different to say, but of course it should be repeated whenever such an opportunity is offered and it should be repeated that there is something very wrong going with this process and without seeking to prejudge the aspect having to with the justice and the independence of a tribunal that has been established through the Kosovo Assembly vote, I am just flabbergasted by the most negative sense, by the fact that the leaders and the commanders of a people’s liberation movement, not of regular army, but of a rebel against a brutal regime that sought to ethnically cleanse Kosovo Albanians stands now accused or they stand accused together on criminal charges. The very  man that the current United States President, and previously one of the main members of the U.S. Senate, Joe Biden called him “the George Washington of Kosovo”, is behind the bars already for a long a time now, after being detained as incumbent President and being in custody without facing any charges for a year now, which goes beyond any imagination vis-à-vis the international and national law and should now face a process, which makes me think: “Will this probably be also the fate of President Zelensky 10 years from now?” Although it is still somehow different, because Zelensky is the commander of a regular army, whereas Hashim Thaçi was the commander of a liberation movement that came to be known as the Liberation Army, but which was far from having a chain of command  for such charges to be filed. And when I saw how Russians started to speculate over alleged organ trafficking in Donbas and how the first war crime allegations started to surface, allegedly suggesting that such crimes have been committed by the Ukrainian army too, I thought: “God forbid it, because we may happen to see this hero, whom we all admire, end up before a court too.”

 -Mr. Prime Minister, “Freedom has a name” was one of the biggest rallies taking place in recent days in Kosovo, a rally that brought together not only Kosovo’s politics, but also the civil society organizations, and the religious communities. However, you are here together with President Aleksandar Vucic. Does this have a meaning?

PM Rama: This is completely coincidental, as we are here on the opening day of the exhibition VinItaly, one of the world’s biggest exhibitions and definitely the Europe’s biggest one, along with the Dusseldorf fair – if I am not mistaken – to showcase our products, something new that has never happened before and of course it is the outcome of cooperation in the framework of the Open Balkan and it is a complete coincidence. But, on the other hand, all Kosovo leaders, including the current Kosovo Prime Minister, have sat and discussed with president Vucic, because this should actually be the case and it can in no way be otherwise and today’s event is far from having to what is going to happen tomorrow, because what is about to happen tomorrow is not a process or a new stage of a process that takes place in Serbia. It is taking place in the Hague, chaired by a panel that is supposed to represent the democratic world of freedoms and rights, is supposed to embody the right, the human freedom and rights, the convention etc, and it would be better that I don’t go on speaking longer, because I can really say a lot.

– On the eve of the trial of the five main KLA leaders, some incidents took place in Northern Mitrovica a few hours ago. Did you have the opportunity to communicate with President Vucic about the situation there?

PM Edi Rama: We have been there all the time and without any outside interference, but we have also engaged in discussions with the governor of Veneto, the Italian Foreign Minister. We will receive the Italian Prime Minister here tomorrow. These three countries and we are the guests of honour at this international exhibition. Of course it is a complicated process. Incidents and clashes have taken place, but, on the other hand, things have moved forward throughout this process.

The Kosovo Prime Minister and the President of Serbia have now embarked on an advanced stage of the normalization process and, as I already earlier said and as I have written about, last meeting with Albin (Kurti) made me be strongly believe we are now in a positive phase and I fully support Kosovo Prime Minister in this effort. I do not understand at all those who consider him a traitor. Of course, about things for which he has considered others traitors before, but this has nothing to do with the fact that these are completely different things. As Prime Minister of Kosovo, he is doing things right. I fully support this process and I am very confident that the process will conclude and I am also very confident that Albania-Serbia and Serbia-Albania relations will positively affect the process.

-Do you think that tomorrow’s trial will affect the process and will force the Kosovo PM to adopt a different approach to the dialogue with Serbia?

PM Edi Rama: It does not seem to me that there is any cause and effect relationship with what is happening in The Hague, and the Prime Minister of Kosovo is focused on his work, on his agenda, on the normalization process. So I don’t see a cause and effect relationship, all the more so that in the capacity of the Kosovo Prime Minister he must fully respect the process of justice without questioning it, regardless of what we may think and what we feel in our souls and what is about to break our souls for the sort of justice applied there, but we don’t have to make comments.

– What would you wish for the five KLA leaders on this journey with international justice?

PM Edi Rama: What they are being through can be well defined by the word “appalling”. However, on the other hand, they are people who have defied the common sense previously, so to speak, and they have done so in a very extreme way when they dared, not just to think about it, but to also act to make Kosovo independent, at a time when nobody ever considered such an idea at all and dared to push Ibrahim Rugova’s idea for independence forward and render it the dimension of the armed struggle. So, something so heroic that today many tend to forget, because sometimes that’s how life is, sometimes that’s how people are and sometimes politics and cynicism blinds the eyes of many and unfortunately not all of them think today that without Hashim Thaçi, those who are there and without the heroes, martyrs and protagonists who gave their lives or not for the Kosovo Liberation Army, and none of those who don’t keep quiet today would have been totally silent, because nobody would have let them to speak out. These are the life stages. On the other hand, I admire the strength, patience and perseverance of Hashim and others to succeed even in this battle which is as equal as the battle with the then enemy even though it is not a battle with the enemy; it is a battle with the friend.

Thank you!