Kosovo indictments confirmed, dignity of the state maintained

The big presidential news this morning is not in the United States, where vote counting continues in several battleground states, but in Kosovo, where President Thaci and the current leader of the party he founded, Kadri Veseli, have been indicted by the Specialist Chambers in The Hague. That court, staffed by internationals, was

established pursuant to an international agreement ratified by the Kosovo Assembly, a Constitutional Amendment and the Law on Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office. They are of temporary nature with a specific mandate and jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, war crimes and other crimes under Kosovo law, which were commenced or committed in Kosovo between 1 January 1998 and 31 December 2000 by or against citizens of Kosovo or the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

I do not see the text of the indictment yet on the Specialist Chambers website, but it regards allegations of crimes committed while Thaci and Veseli were leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, possibly including murder and organ-trafficking described in the Council of Europe’s “Marty report.”

The indictees have done the right thing: resigned and pledged to confront the charges in The Hague, where they will join a number of their wartime colleagues. The political impact inside Kosovo is not yet clear: many supporters of the KLA will protest. I imagine the government will help their defense. But their absence will leave a big hold in Kosovo politics. It is unclear as yet who will fill it. I hope they will be figures of unimpeachable character.

The Specialist Chambers are a laudable effort to establish accountability after the war of the late 1990s in what was then a province of Serbia. The trouble is it is focused only on one side of that conflict. Serbia was of course subject to the jurisdiction of the now defunct International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), also in The Hague. But that Tribunal and the Serbian courts have failed to hold accountable many criminal perpetrators in Kosovo. Slobodan Milosevic died in prison before the end of his trial. Several well-known commanders of the then Yugoslav army and police were never indicted and continue to hold prominent positions.

This makes the Specialist Chambers a one-sided instrument. It should not be so. Either the Serbian courts should bring charges against those who committed crimes in Kosovo or Belgrade should adopt the necessary laws to allow the Specialist Chambers to do so. The United States lost three of its citizens to a post-war murder inside Serbia for which no one has been held accountable. America and the European Union should be insisting far more strongly than they have to date on accountability in Serbia.

As for Thaci and Veseli as well as other indictees, I expect them to mount a vigorous defense against charges that may be difficult to prove, given the amount of time elapsed and the difficulty of finding and protecting witnesses. They should and will be presumed innocent until proven guilty. And they should be credited with the dignity of resigning and facing the charges. In doing so, they make me long for the day when America will again have leaders prepared to be subject to the law.