PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) - Kosovo’s prime minister on Sunday met with two men who are to be questioned by an international court about their roles in the bloody 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia.
Ramush Haradinaj showed in his Facebook page pictures of meetings at their homes with Sami Lushtaku and Rrustem Mustafa who are to be questioned next week by The Hague-based Specialist Prosecutor’s Office.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers was created in 2015 to investigate allegations that some fighters for independence committed war crimes during and after the war.
Lushtaku ironically told journalists at the airport he would “feel bad” if not summoned by the court.
“Yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever I have and will defend the truth, the fair and clean war of the Kosovo Liberation Army!” Lushtaku wrote in his Facebook page.
“I am going there to be interviewed. Normally I am a suspected witness,” Mustafa, nicknamed Remi, told journalists. “We are innocent.”
Both also said they were contacted by President Hashim Thaci, who is also a former fighter.
Their lawyer Arianit Koci told journalists Mustafa would be interviewed on Monday while Lushtaku two days later Jan. 16.
Haradinaj, a former independence fighter himself who was twice acquitted of war crimes and crimes against humanity by a United Nations court, said Kosovo’s war for independence was “clean and sacred.”
“Together we shall come out spotless from this challenge,” he wrote in his Facebook page.
The court was set up following U.S. and EU pressure four years after a 2011 report by the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights body, which catalogued allegations of widespread crimes committed by members of the Kosovo independence fighters.
Kosovo’s 2008 independence is not recognized by Serbia.
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Llazar Semini reported from Tirana, Albania.
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