Durísimo artículo publicado en "Politico" sobre la situación en Kosovo.
Para el que se pierda, POLITICO es un medio de comunicación USA relativamente reciente, fundado por dos directores del "The Washington Post", y tiene un perfil liberal de centro-izquierda. En Europa, quizá os suene, adquirió recientemente el periódico "European Voice", que, desde Abril de este año, ha pasado a denominarse "Politico Europe"
Politico Europe
En fin, decía que duro artículo publicado en este periódico contra la clase política de Kosovo y sobre la situación en ese país:
The bullies who run Kosovo
El artículo se centra especialmente en los continuos obstáculos que está poniendo el parlamento de Kosovo para la aprobación de los cambios constitucionales que se exigen para que pueda comenzar a funcionar (en Holanda) el Tribunal Penal Especial que debería juzgar los crímenes cometidos por la guerrilla kosovar. Esos crímenes aparecen reflejados en los informes elaborados, en primer lugar, por un relator suizo del Consejo de Europa llamado Dick Marty. En aquel informe, se aludía a indicios serios de que los dirigentes de la guerrilla kosovar, y que ahora ocupan altos cargos en las instituciones de ese país, estaban involucrados en actividades criminales al mando de mafias dedicadas al narcotráfico. Asimismo, se aludía que algunos de ellos (especialmente el entonces primer ministro kosovar y actual ministro de Asuntos Exteriores, Hasim Thaçi) participaron en el secuestro de ciudadanos serbios que habitaban en Kosovo, para trasladarlos clandestinamente a Albania, donde eran asesinados para extraerlos sus órganos vitales y venderlos posteriormente en el mercado negro.
A resultas de aquel informe, la Unión Europea y Estados Unidos organizaron un equipo de investigación especial, dirigido por un fiscal norteamericano llamado Williamson, que, tras varios años de investigación, confirmó las conclusiones del informe de Dick Marty.
Tras ambos informes, la Unión Europea decidió la constitución de este Tribunal Penal Especial para juzgar esos crímenes. El problema era que, para no desairar al gobierno kosovar, establecieron que ese Tribunal estaría incardinado en las estructuras judiciales kosovares, aunque funcionaría desde Holanda y sus jueces serían internacionales. Pero para ello se necesita primero que se realicen cambios en la Constitución de Kosovo para que ese Tribunal pueda empezar a funcionar. Y es aquí donde surgen los problemas porque se han celebrado ya dos votaciones en el parlamento de Kosovo y en ambas votaciones ha ganado el NO. Estados Unidos y la UE presionan a Kosovo para que vuelva a votar y apruebe definitivamente ese Tribunal, y actualmente parece que todo está bloquedado.
Extractos del artículo de "POLITICO":
En primer lugar, sobre los antecedentes que os acabo de contar:
Ver citas anteriores
Assertions that KLA leaders were involved in a spate of kidnappings and murders and other grave crimes after the NATO bombing campaign in 1999 were first aired in 2008 with the publication in Italy of “La Caccia,” the memoirs of the former UN war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, which I co-authored.
At Russia’s behest, the Council of Europe, in 2009, launched an investigation under Dick Marty — a former state prosecutor from Switzerland and a member of the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly — to examine the assertions made in La Caccia. Marty’s report named Thaçi as the leader of organized criminal enterprises that flourished in Kosovo and Albania from 1999, and implicated him in kidnappings, murders, and organ-trafficking operations that claimed the lives of Serbs, Roma, Albanians, and persons from other ethnic groups, some of whom were abducted in Kosovo, transported across the border to secret detention camps in Albania, and eventually killed.
After Marty released his findings, the U.S. and the EU organized, under EU auspices, a special criminal-investigation unit to develop evidence and decide whether there were sufficient grounds to press criminal charges.
In July 2014, the special investigation’s chief prosecutor, Clint Williamson — a former United States ambassador-at-large for war crimes and one of the drafters of the criminal indictment against Miloševi? by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague — announced that his team had procured enough evidence to support indictments against senior KLA members. The charges Williamson listed included unlawful killing, abduction, illegal detention, sexual violence, forced displacement of individuals from their homes and communities, and the desecration and destruction of religious sites.
“The evidence is compelling that these crimes were not the acts of rogue individuals acting on their own accord, but rather that they were conducted in an organized fashion and were sanctioned by certain individuals in the top levels of the KLA leadership,” Mr. Williamson wrote in a statement outlining the investigation’s results. The evidence and detailed findings are sealed until a court is established to hear the cases.
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The victims of the alleged kidnappings and murders in 1999 and 2000 were mostly members of Kosovo’s Serb, Roma, and other minority groups; but these victims also included a significant number of Albanians who were fingered as Serb “collaborators” or who ran afoul of the KLA’s commanders in other ways. Investigators have accumulated evidence showing that several of the murders were linked with the sale for profit of their victims’ organs, but are still working to amass sufficient evidence to bring indictments against individuals suspected of being involved.
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“The sad thing is that the United States and European countries knew 10 years ago that Thaçi and his men were engaged in drug smuggling and creating a mafia state,” said a European ambassador who has followed the Balkans for decades. “The attitude was, ‘He’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard.’”
Y sobre las acusaciones a la clase política kosovar:
Ver citas anteriores
Thaçi and other members of Kosovo’s political elite who have been named in Western intelligence reports as organized-crime figures are, the diplomats say, sacrificing the best interests of the Republic of Kosovo and the Kosovars in order to protect themselves from criminal prosecution.
They are doing so by defying efforts by Washington and Brussels to establish a special court to undertake prosecutions stemming from allegations that Thaçi and other commanders and soldiers of the Kosovo Albanian insurgency — the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) — were involved in about 400 cases of kidnapping, forced displacement, illegal imprisonment, and murder after NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999.
These Kosovar leaders, the diplomats say, have effectively plied their influence to prevent Kosovo’s parliament from passing a legislative package, including constitutional amendments, that would allow for the special court’s establishment.
“If this doesn’t pass, United States relations with this Kosovo government and future Kosovo governments will deteriorate,” said one Western diplomat, referring to the legislative package on the court. “The United States wants to demonstrate the depth of its commitment to have these allegations heard in a credible process.”
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The special court would nominally be located in Kosovo and would operate under Kosovo’s own laws. But the court would have foreign prosecutors, judges, and staff and conduct its trials outside Kosovo. Holding such proceedings in the country would expose court officials and, more critically, prospective witnesses and their family members, to violence and intimidation. Gangland killings and intimidation of diplomats are hardly unusual in Kosovo; and the Kosovars’ traditional practice of blood vengeance, which demands retaliation even against family members of a violator, still trumps Western-style rule of law.
The latest U.S. warning to Thaçi and other members of Kosovo’s government and assembly came on July 12, when a senior State Department official vigorously urged Kosovar leaders to effect the constitutional changes by August 1. During a series of heated meetings in the country’s capital, Priština, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland informed Kosovar leaders, including Thaçi and another former KLA commander and former prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj, that a failure to meet the deadline would result in “consequences” she did not specify, said a Kosovo-based source who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the risks entailed in divulging such information.
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Thaçi — who for years was the go-to guy in Kosovo for American, European, and UN officials — has religiously expressed public support for the special court and claims to be pressuring recalcitrant deputies in his own party to vote for the amendments.
It’s one thing to say he supports the court, but the fact is he’s the one man in Priština who can make it happen, and and it hasn’t. Western diplomats speculate that his outward support is political theater and that Thaçi is working behind the scenes — intimidating members of his own political party — to delay the court’s establishment for as long as possible. Is this, diplomats wonder, because he fears being indicted? Delaying the court’s formation would — through the further loss by attrition of witnesses to crimes committed 16 years ago — weaken the evidence a prosecutor might bring against him and other potential accused.
“Thaçi is behaving like a caged animal,” said a senior representative in Priština for a major international organization. “Kosovo’s people would be happy to be rid of him, but they don’t know how to be rid of him. Thaçi controls the government and economic life. There is no chance for new, young leaders to emerge. There is no hope for new businesses to succeed.”
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Some Western diplomats and analysts from international organizations say that recent armed clashes between KLA “separatists” and special police in Macedonia, as well as a sudden, surprising surge in the number of illegal Kosovar migrants delivered by people smugglers to Hungary’s border with Serbia in February might have been warnings from Kosovo’s underworld leaders to the EU of the havoc they can cause the EU if Brussels does not back off on the court issue.
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En fin, un artículo (todo él) interesantísimo para saber qué es lo que está pasando en Kosovo en relación con este tema.
Lo que indigna es que todo lo que aparece en el artículo es algo que todos saben o sabemos, pero de lo que rarísima vez se habla, porque Kosovo es un Estado "colonia" de Estados Unidos, donde USA hace y deshace a su antojo.
Saludos.