The former Foreign Minister Elisa Spiropali reacted with rather harsh tones after the decision of the Special Court of The Hague against four former leaders of the KLA: Hashim Thaçi, Jakup Krasniqi, Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi.
Spiropali described the announced verdict as a direct blow to the foundation bricks of Kosovo’s freedom and as an open attempt to criminalize an entire liberation enterprise through a false political narrative.
Through a public statement, Spiropali drew attention to the parallelism with the former persecution of the Belgrade regime, underlining that the consequences of this trial go beyond the fate of four individuals.
“Milosevic’s Serbia sentenced Hashim Thaçi of Kosovo to ten years in prison. For 1 single reason: Because Hashim Thaçi did not choose the yoke, but armed resistance against slavery. Today, in The Hague, four individuals were not cruelly punished; Hashim Thaçi, Jakup Krasniqi, Kadri Veseli and Rexhep Selimi. Through the language used and the political narrative, what was actually condemned for Albanians and the whole world, regardless of how they phrased it, it was a liberating enterprise”, she declared.
Further, Spiropali criticized the structure of the legal articulation of the judicial body, stressing that the attempt to qualify the KLA as a criminal enterprise is a historical absurdity.
“A court can determine individual responsibility. But it cannot rewrite as a criminal project the struggle of a people for freedom. The KLA was the answer to the Serbian state violence and the foundation on which the freedom of Kosovo was built”, underlined Spiropali, while issuing an urgent call for interstate institutional reaction: “The Assembly of Albania and the Assembly of Kosovo must immediately adopt a joint resolution that protects the historical truth of the liberation war and opposes any attempt for the guilt of the KLA and of an entire people.”
