THE HAGUE: International prosecutors questioned Kosovo’s ex-prime minister and wartime guerrilla commander Ramush Haradinaj on Wednesday in the latest in a series of war crimes proceedings against him.
Haradinaj left the hearing at the special court for Kosovo in The Hague along with Jakup Krasniqi, a spokesman for his former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who was also questioned.
“I responded today to the special tribunal’s request, as a suspect,” Haradinaj told reporters outside the special court’s high-security buildings.
“I used my right to remain silent,” he said.
Haradinaj was the commander of the ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the Western Kosovo region of Dukagjin, where heavy fighting and abuse of civilians occurred on both sides during the war.
Observers in Kosovo say he could be held accountable for having failed to prevent crimes committed by KLA members under his command.
Haradinaj said prosecutors did not confront him with “concrete” evidence on Wednesday, as they did not have to divulge any information at this stage according to the law.
“They talked about my role during the war, but they did not give me anything concrete... We asked for explanations but did not receive them,” said the former guerrilla.
Hesaid he believed “always to have been in line with what is right.”
“We have fulfilled our legal obligation, according to the laws in force,” Krasniqi told reporters. He did not say whether he himself was questioned as a suspect or a witness.
Haradinaj, 51, resigned last week as prime minister after being summoned by the court.
Created in 2015, the tribunal investigates crimes allegedly committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) against Serbs, Roma and ethnic Albanian political opponents during and after the 1998-99 war.
Funded by the European Union and composed of international judges, the special court nonetheless falls under Kosovar law and is based in The Hague in order to protect witnesses.
Haradinaj has already been tried and acquitted twice for war crimes by another UN tribunal for former Yugoslavia.
“I always responded to (requirements) of national and international laws (but)... I also have my dignity,” Haradinaj told AFP in January.
The last conflict in the former Yugoslavia between the KLA and Serbian armed forces claimed more than 13,000 lives, including some 11,000 ethnic Albanians.
It ended when a Western bombing campaign forced Serbian forces to withdraw.
Two decades later Belgrade still does not recognize its former province’s independence.
Some thirty former KLA members have been summoned by the special court which has yet to file a single criminal charge.
“Freedom fighters always do what is right and just,” Haradinaj wrote on Facebook.
Kosovo ex-PM questioned at war crimes court
Kosovo ex-PM questioned at war crimes court
- Haradinaj was the commander of the ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the Western Kosovo region of Dukagjin, where heavy fighting and abuse of civilians occurred on both sides during the war
- Haradinaj, 51, resigned last week as prime minister after being summoned by the court
Bomb kills chief of Russian nuclear protection forces in Moscow — media
- Russian media said Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov had been killed on Ryazansky Prospekt
- TASS state news agency said two killed in explosion on Moscow’s Ryazansky Prospekt
MOSCOW: A bomb killed a senior Russian general in charge of nuclear protection forces and another man in Moscow on Tuesday, the RT state media group said on Tuesday, citing an unidentified law enforcement source.
Russian media said that Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, who is chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, had been killed on Ryazansky Prospekt.
Russian news Telegram channels also reported that Kirillov had been killed but there was no official confirmation of the killing.
TASS state news agency said two people were killed in an explosion on Moscow’s Ryazansky Prospekt.
A criminal investigation was opened in connection with the death of two men on Ryazansky Prospekt, Russia’s RIA state news agency reported, citing Moscow investigators.
Ryazansky Prospekt is a road that starts some 7 km (4.35 miles) southeast of the Kremlin.
Investigators and forensic experts were working at the scene together with employees of other emergency services, TASS agency reported.
South Korean president’s defense team denies insurrection charges: Yonhap
SEOUL: South Korea’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol did not commit insurrection but will cooperate with the investigation into his martial law declaration, his defense team said Tuesday, Yonhap news agency reported.
“While we do not consider the insurrection charges to be legally valid, we will comply with the investigation,” his lawyers said, according to Yonhap.
Bomb kills chief of Russian nuclear protection forces in Moscow, media reports say
MOSCOW: A bomb killed a senior Russian general in charge of nuclear protection forces and another man in Moscow on Tuesday, the RT state media group said on Tuesday, citing an unidentified law enforcement source.
Russian media said the that Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, who is chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, had been killed on Ryazansky Prospekt.
Russian news Telegram channels also reported that Kirillov had been killed but there was no official confirmation of the killing.
TASS state news agency said two people were killed in an explosion on Moscow’s Ryazansky Prospekt.
A criminal investigation was opened in connection with the death of two men on Ryazansky Prospekt, Russia’s RIA state news agency reported, citing Moscow investigators.
Ryazansky Prospekt is a road that starts some 7 km (4.35 miles) southeast of the Kremlin.
Investigators and forensic experts were working at the scene together with employees of other emergency services, TASS agency reported.
US national security adviser Sullivan says Trump should like ‘burden sharing’ AUKUS deal
SYDNEY: The AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine partnership with Australia will benefit the United States and is the kind of “burden sharing” deal that President-elect Donald Trump has talked about, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
In an interview with Australia’s Lowy Institute think tank published on Tuesday, Sullivan said he had confidence AUKUS would endure under the Trump presidency, as it enhances US deterrent capability in the Indo-Pacific and has Australia contributing to the US industrial base.
The trilateral AUKUS deal struck in 2021 is Australia’s biggest defense project, with a cost of A$368 billion ($245 billion) by 2055, as Australia buys several Virginia-class submarines from the United States while also building a new class of nuclear-powered submarine in Britain and Australia.
“The United States is benefiting from burden sharing — exactly the kind of thing that Mr.Trump has talked a lot about,” Sullivan said of the AUKUS agreement.
Australia has agreed to invest $3 billion in US shipyards that build the Virginia-class nuclear submarines it will be sold early next decade amid concerns that a backlog of orders could jeopardize the deal.
Australia having conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines enhances America’s deterrent capability in the Indo-Pacific, Sullivan said.
“Australia is directly contributing to the US submarine industrial base so that we can build out this submarine capability, supply Australia in the nearer term with Virginia class submarines and then in the longer term with the AUKUS class submarine,” he added.
Australia’s defense and foreign ministers, meanwhile, met their counterparts in London on Monday to discuss progress on AUKUS for the first time since a change of government in Britain, and ahead of Trump’s inauguration as US president in January.
Britain’s Defense Secretary John Healey said they discussed “the challenge of maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific, the challenge of China — increasingly active, increasingly assertive in the region — and the vital importance of maintaining both deterrence and freedom of navigation.”
Australia’s Defense Minister Richard Marles said they discussed accelerating the process of bringing Australian companies into the supply chain in Britain for building submarines.
Judge denies Trump’s bid to throw out hush money conviction
- Judge rules Trump’s conviction for falsifying records should stand
- Trump’s lawyers argue case impedes his ability to govern
NEW YORK: A judge on Monday ruled that Donald Trump’s conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal should stand, rejecting the US president-elect’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling nullified the verdict, a court filing showed.
Trump’s lawyers argued that having the case hang over him during his presidency would impede his ability to govern. He was initially scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 26, but Justice Juan Merchan pushed that back indefinitely after Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election.
In a 41-page decision, Justice Juan Merchan said Trump’s “decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch.”
Trump’s lawyer did not immedaitely respond to a request for comment.
Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which brought the case, said there were measures short of the “extreme remedy” of overturning the jury’s verdict that could assuage Trump’s concerns about being distracted by a criminal case while serving as president.
The case stemmed from a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. The payment was for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she has said she had a decade earlier with Trump, who denies it.
A Manhattan jury in May found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the payment. It was the first time a US president — former or sitting — had been convicted of or charged with a criminal offense.
Trump pleaded not guilty and called the case an attempt by Bragg, a Democrat, to harm his 2024 campaign.
