[JURIST] The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] Friday provisionally released [press release] a Kosovar journalist indicted [PDF text; JURIST report] on contempt of court charges for allegedly publishing the identity of a witness in the war crimes trial of former Kosovar Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj [TrialWatch profile; JURIST Forum op-ed]. Baton Haxhiu was arrested Tuesday and pleaded not guilty [Reuters report] in the Hague on Wednesday.

Haradinaj was acquitted [JURIST report] in April, but former Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte’s claims of witness intimidation have cast doubt on the proceedings and the judgment is now being appealed. Haradinaj was a senior commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the ethnic-Albanian guerrilla force that opposed Slobodan Milosevic [JURIST news archive] during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war [BBC backgrounder]. He was indicted [initial indictment, PDF] by ICTY prosecutors in 2005.