First trial Haradinaj served 100 days as prime minister in 2005 before being indicted for
war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (
ICTY), at
The Hague. The indictment alleges that Haradinaj, as a commander of the KLA, committed
crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war between March and September 1998, the alleged purpose of which was to exert control over territory, targeting both
Serb,
Albanian, and
Romani civilians. He was acquitted on 3 April 2008, because of lack of convincing evidence. When the ICTY indictment was issued in March 2005, Haradinaj chose to step down immediately from his position as prime minister. The following day he travelled voluntarily to The Hague where he submitted himself to the custody of the court and remained for two months until he was granted provisional release pending trial. The head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (
UNMIK) during this time,
Søren Jessen-Petersen, welcomed the decision Haradinaj to face the tribunal voluntarily, praised his work and described Haradinaj as a "close partner and friend", despite Western intelligence reports that Haradinaj was a key figure in the range between
organized crime and politics. Citing Mr. Haradinaj's compliance with the ICTY and the fact that he posed no risk of flight and no risk towards witnesses, the Trial Chamber of the ICTY extended his provisional release and allowed him to wait for trial in his hometown of Prishtina. Further, the Appeals Chamber later granted Haradinaj the unprecedented right for an indictee to engage in public political activity. Such activity was, however, subject to the approval of UNMIK. This step was unprecedented in the history of international criminal law and seen as a reflection of the fact that Mr. Haradinaj voluntarily submitted himself to the court. Critics (and the prosecution), however, argued that this went too far. The prosecution argued that although Mr. Haradinaj posed no threat to witnesses, his mere presence in Kosovo could have a "chilling" effect on whether witnesses would testify. The longtime Chief Prosecutor of International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (
ICTY),
Carla Del Ponte, has remained steadfastly unimpressed by the international support for Haradinaj, continuing to make strongly negative statements about him. She told the German that "according to the decision to provisionally release him, he is a stability factor for Kosovo. I never understood this. For me he is a war criminal." The trial, which was enforced by
Carla Del Ponte, began on 5 March 2007 and Haradinaj's defence team was led by Ben Emmerson
QC, an international human rights lawyer, who had supporting counsel in Rodney Dixon, also of
Matrix Chambers of London. The legal defence team as a whole was coordinated by Irish political consultant and financier Michael O'Reilly. At the opening of proceedings, Carla Del Ponte pointed to the problems of the accuser. The intimidation of witnesses was a major problem in the investigation. She claimed that it was difficult to find witnesses who were willing to testify not just to the prosecutors, but also for the tribunal. "The difficulty in Kosovo was that no one helped us, neither the UN administration nor NATO." On 20 July 2007, Ramush Haradinaj's application for provisional release during the summer court recess was denied. He was granted a second exceptional provisional release over the Christmas court recess. The trial chamber rendered its decision on 3 April 2008: not guilty. Defenders of Haradinaj, Balaj and
Lahi Brahimaj did not take a single witness of the defence to the stand, considering it unnecessary. The prosecution was unable to bring three planned witnesses to the courtroom. One of them was committed to a mental health institution at the time he was called to testify. Another, Shefqet Kabashi, refused to testify citing the prosecution's failure to live up to the conditions set for his testimony. Haradinaj's full acquittal, however, was palled by whispers that witnesses had been intimidated. In fact, during the first trial two witnesses failed to attend and it was feared their evidence could have been determinative to the outcome. The judges addressed the atmosphere of intimidation that surrounded the trial directly and noted: "the Chamber encountered significant difficulties in securing the testimony of a large number of these witnesses. Many cited fear as a prominent reason for not wishing to appear before the Chamber to give evidence. In this regard, the Chamber gained a strong impression that the trial was being held in an atmosphere where witnesses felt unsafe, due to a number of factors set out in the Judgement."
Witness intimidation Because witness intimidation had been such an important issue during the initial trial, witness protection was a prominent feature in both trials. During both trials, the Prosecution took great pains to protect the identity of witnesses called to testify. This often included, voice modification, pseudonyms, and in some cases witness relocation. During the retrial, the Court took the extraordinary measure of moving the entire court to an undisclosed secret location in order to secure the testimony of a protected witness. These efforts paid off. The ICTY stated that no witnesses were murdered during either trial. Kujtim Berisha died following a traffic crash on 18 February 2007 in
Podgorica, Montenegro. Montenegrin police concluded a 67-year-old Montenegrin Serb named Aleksandar Ristović drove his car into Berisha and two other men, killing Berisha. Police "confirmed that at the moment of accident Ristović was drunk-driving at a very high speed" at the time of the crash. Montenegrin investigators found "no evidence that the accident was staged".. The ICTY Tribunal confirmed this noting: "The (ICTY) tribunal noted that Kujtim Berisha was the only person [who died] who was planned to be called as a witness in the Haradinaj et al. trial." He died in a 2007 car accident in Podgorica. Various media outlets from several different countries have written that as many as nineteen people who were supposed to be witnesses in the trial against Haradinaj were murdered. The ICTY disputed these reports. The first time the ICTY formally refuted this rumor was shortly after the initial trial. Serbian media claimed that Haradinaj's acquittal was based on the "mafia style killing of witnesses". The ICTY spokeswoman in Serbia, Nerma Jelačić, stated that these allegations were untrue and served only to politicize the work of the court. Her statement was later echoed and reaffirmed by the ICTY Trial Chamber itself which commented that no witnesses in the protected witness program were killed during the initial trial. The ICTY refuted his statement and shortly thereafter the ICTY's war crimes prosecutor responded to these allegations and claimed again that no ICTY witnesses had been murdered. Two of the individuals listed by the Serbian Prosecutor (Sadik and Vesel Muriqi) turned out to still be alive.
Second trial , September 2010 The second trial began on 18 August 2011 in front of a second Trial Chamber made up of three different judges. Haradinaj was represented again by Ben Emmerson QC, Rodney Dixon QC and Andrew Strong. The Prosecution called 56 witnesses against Haradinaj and again Haradinaj called no defense witness. On 29 November 2012, Haradinaj was acquitted a second time. This time, due to the extreme diligence of the court and of the parties there was no allegation of witness intimidation. Instead the judges found that not only was there no evidence to convict Haradinaj, the Court held that the evidence established that he had acted to prevent criminal behaviour where he could. The central allegation against Haradinaj was that he participated in a criminal plan to persecute civilians. The Court directly addressed this allegation and stated in its summary of the judgment that: After this ruling, there were serious questions raised as to why Haradinaj was ever indicted in the first place. Indeed, Lord Madonald of River Glaven QC, a former
Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales, said: "This prosecution was a stupid attempt to equate resistance with aggression. It was an embarrassment to the international community." The governments of both Albania and Kosovo have demanded a public inquiry into the behavior of the Chief Prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, over her conduct in bringing this indictment forward.
Geoffrey Nice, the ICTY prosecutor in the Milošević case, wrote in a column in
Koha Ditore that at least three experienced prosecution lawyers advised Del Ponte against indicting Ramush Haradinaj since it could not be proved he was guilty. One of those lawyers was Andrew T. Cayley QC, one of the most esteemed lawyers at the Tribunal and currently the Chief Prosecutor at the Cambodian Tribunal. He stated that he felt increasing pressure to bring the case despite an acute lack of evidence. After a thorough review of the initial evidence, Andrew T. Cayley QC wrote to the Chief Prosecutor at the time in which he told her that the prosecution could not proceed on the evidence it had. The Court sentenced Bajrush Morina to three months imprisonment for attempting to obstruct a witness from testifying. In rendering its sentence the court acknowledged that there were no aggravating factors that should increase the sentence. The film premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh in 2009. ==Arrests in Slovenia and in France==