Haradinaj trial: First witness testifies

Haradinaj trial: First witness testifies

Anđelković was an investigator with the Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC) a Belgrade-based NGO. She visited a number of villages in western Kosovo and talked to Serbs, Montenegrins and Roma who claimed they were victims of armed persons who spoke Albanian.

Her testimony was interrupted yesterday when it was discovered that the defense had not been given the translation of the parts of what was written in the notebook where mention was made of the kidnapped Serbs and several names of victims listed in the indictment against Ramush Haradinaj, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj.

Prosecutor David Re explained today that the notebooks were translated by "different translators, one for the Roman and the other for Cyrillic text". Their translations were never incorporated into a single document.

Yesterday Marijana Anđelković highlighted parts of the HLC report that include interviews she conducted in March and April 1998. One of them is a report on the conflict about the Haradinaj family property in Glodjani on 24 March 1998.

There were also two missing persons reports, one related to "the disappearance of Albanians that could be attributed to the police", and the other about "the disappearance of Serbs that could be attributed to the KLA".

At the end of the examination-in chief, Mirjana Anđelković summarized her impressions from the visit to Kosovo in the spring of 1998. She noted "the increase of tensions in smaller villages around Dečani", increased police presence, "general anxiety and unrest", "increased fear among Montenegrins and Serbs" who left their villages after Easter 1998 and went to larger towns.

The main reasons that prompted them to leave, she noted, were the uncertainty and fear of  "armed people who spoke Albanian", who would fire at their houses at night, take them to be interrogated and mistreated in their headquarters or stop, search and question them on the roads around Dečani. The Serbian villagers she talked to did not identify the "armed people" as the KLA. The police at the check points called them "terrorists".

In the cross-examination, the defense counsel representing Ramush Haradinaj and Idriz Balaj noted that at the time the witness had been talking to Serbian villagers in the Dečani area, her colleague from the HLC had been collecting statements from Albanians in Glodjani and other villages regarding the events of 24 March 1998.

The defense counsel argued that those statements painted a totally different picture of the circumstances leading to the conflict and its aftermath from the one in the statement Vladimir and Ljubica Stojanović gave to Marijana Anđelković. The Stojanović family were the Haradinaj family’s next door neighbors.

Vladimir and Ljubica Stojanović talked to the witness in Dečani and said that fire had been opened on the police from the Haradinaj family property. The police returned fire. Dozens of Albanians who talked to her HLC colleague said this had been “a massive police attack with helicopters from which fire was opened at civilians.”

The prosecution continues its case against Haradinaj, Balaj and Brahimaj today.