Ernesa Shala is a JURIST staff correspondent in Kosovo and a recent graduate of the University of Pristina Faculty of Law. She files this dispatch from Pristina. In the early morning of September 24, 2023, the peaceful village of Banjska near Kosovo’s Serbian border was a target of terrorist attacks which left one Kosovo [...]
Search Results for: kosovo
Kosovo war crimes court announces Albania arrest of wanted KLA fighter
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC), a court established in 2017 as a means of trying war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo from 1998-2000, announced Monday that Albanian authorities have arrested Dritan Goxhaj for impeding the administration of justice. Goxhaj previously served as a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighter. Albanian authorities arrested Goxhaj under [...]
Former Kosovo intelligence chief sentenced to prison for illegal deportations
Kosovo’s former intelligence chief, Driton Gashi, was convicted of “abuse of official post or authority” on Wednesday in consequence of deporting six Turkish people who had permanent residence or temporary permits unlawfully. According to the basic court in Pristina, Gashi was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison and not allowed to serve [...]
The US Supreme Court does not want or need an enforceable code of ethics. As I listen to the reasons given by some members of the Supreme Court to support this position, the words sound strikingly familiar. I have heard the same reasons given by judges in several developing democracies, mostly post-communist countries in Central [...]
The Ohrid Agreement, officially known as the Agreement on the Path to Normalization between Kosovo and Serbia, was verbally accepted by the Serbian President and Kosovar Prime Minister in March 2023, symbolizing the most significant advance in negotiations between the two nations in years. A report by the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies (The Kosovar [...]
Interview: Columbia's Jeffrey Sachs on Russia, Ukraine, and International Justice
Economist and foreign policy expert Jeffrey Sachs, a best selling author and director of Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development, has long argued that Russia’s hostility toward Ukraine was provoked by the U.S. vis-à-vis pushes for NATO expansion, military interventions, and other forms of meddling. In an interview with JURIST Assistant Editor Pitasanna Shanmugathas, Sachs [...]
A Serbian court near the Kosovo border ordered the release of three Kosovo police officers on Monday who were detained earlier this month. Prosecutors in the Serbian city of Kraljevo, just over one hundred kilometers north of the Kosovo border, indicted the officers for trafficking explosive weapons into Serbia. The High Court of Kraljevo released [...]
Serbian army commander urges NATO to increase protections to minority Serbs in Kosovo
Serbian army commander, General Milan Mojsilovic, is urging NATO peacekeepers to increase efforts to protect minority Serbs who are in Kosovo. The call for protection follows the failure of peacekeeping negotiations between the EU, Serbia and Kosovo. Last week, the EU hosted emergency talks on Friday with the aim of defusing tensions around the borders [...]
Serbia prosecutors investigate detained Kosovo policemen amid calls for their release
Prosecutors in Kraljevo, Serbia began an investigation on Friday into three Kosovo officers who were controversially detained by the Serbian border control. The officers were arrested on Wednesday, and Serbian authorities are investigating whether they committed “nauthorized production, possession, carrying and trafficking of weapons” while active on the Serbia-Kosovo border. Kosovo’s Justice Minister Albulena Haxhiu [...]
UN judges expand war crime convictions of former Serbian security officials
The UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) on Wednesday expanded the convictions and increased the sentences of two individuals who helped to murder and deport non-Serbs during the Balkan wars. The two, Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović, are former Serbian security officials. The IRMCT’s Appeals Chamber dismissed the men’s appeals of their convictions [...]