James Rubin, a former US Secretary of State during the Kosovo war, has called a strong call that the Special Court in The Hague (Specialist Chambers of Kosovo) “Do the right thing” and to acquit the former KLA.
Rubin, who testified for three days as a witness to the trial against former President Hashim Thaci and others, raised the alarm that the trial is leading international criminal law to one place “Very weird and disturbing,” and described the judges’ questions as biased.
In an interview with American journalist Christian Amanpour, Rubin said that during his testimony he noticed a disturbing tendency from the trial panel.
“The judges, to my surprise, asked me questions that seemed to me biased. They didn’t sound like questions to discover facts … It seemed to me that they had already decided that the KLA was a structured organization where Thaci was at the top, which is not true,” said ruby.
The former diplomat argued that the purpose of war crimes courts is to determine individual, non-collective responsibility, to prevent the continuation of ethnic conflicts. He said these defendants did not have “Responsibility, ability and authority to allow or order war crimes.”
KLA and Role of Hashim Thaci
Speaking about his experience during the Kosovo war, Rubin said he saw closely the KLA’s internal functioning, which he described as a “Unprepared, disorganized army.”
He stressed that Thaci, then a young man, did not control anything within this structure, but worked more as Foreign Minister.
Rubin added that the Balkans are again in an uncertain situation and called on the international community to intervene after the Special Decision: “Then the United States together with the Europeans should sit with the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia and solve this problem.”
He recalled that during the war years, intervention led by President Clinton and Madeleine Albright helped prevent potential genocide in time.
