Today in Tirana, a protest that has been announced for days is expected to be held with the motto “Freedom has a Name, Freedom for Liberators”, which aims to gather Albanians in support of the former leaders of the KLA, who are being tried in The Hague.
The protest aims to oppose the treatment these figures of the fight for freedom and independence are receiving, raising concerns about the standards followed by the Special Court.
In the “Good Morning Albania” studio, political analyst Adri Nurellari emphasized the importance of this protest to send a clear message to the international community.
“This protest is very important to send a message that the Albanian people do not stand idly by and observe that there is a direct attempt to equate history and to equate the executioner with the victimNurellari said.
He added that the process in The Hague is relativizing the moral position of the people of Kosovo and the Albanians’ struggle for freedom, violating the basic principles of European justice.
“We should not be indifferent to a process that is taking place outside any kind of European standards, human rights and the regular and impartial process as foreseen,” he said.
Nurellari criticized the procrastination of the process and the prolonged detention of the accused, saying that: “First, it is based on the fact that 5 years of detention are coming up, which is a sentence without a decision, delaying the process. Where the Convention provides that detention is the exception, not the rule. They have made it the rule and not the exception.”
He pointed out that the Special Court is not meeting the standards of justice, citing the lack of presumption of innocence and equality of parties in the judicial process.
The analyst recalled that the Special Court was created after Dick Marty’s report to the Council of Europe, in order to guarantee a fair and transparent process.
“The greatest irony is that this court was created after Dick Marty’s report to the Council of Europe and today it is violating these very principles on many levels.“, he emphasized.
He added that the Court is not fulfilling the standards of justice, citing the lack of presumption of innocence, the equality of the parties and the impartiality of the judging panel.
“The court is not fulfilling these standards, either in the presumption of innocence, or in the equality of the parties in the judicial process, in the impartiality of the judiciary because we have seen that the judiciary has become one with the prosecutionNurellari said.
The protest is expected to be an important moment to express solidarity and public concern towards the developments in The Hague and to reaffirm the values of the fight for freedom – concluded analyst Nurellari.
