Hoxhaj: No More Normalizing With Serbia Over War Court

Democratic Party of Kosovo lawmaker and former foreign minister Enver Hoxhaj has called on the Kosovo Assembly to launch an initiative to abolish the Specialist Chambers in The Hague, and told Pristina at the same time that he will no longer work on normalizing relations with Serbia just to satisfy European Union expectations. He made the case on the show “DPT te Fidani” on Klan Kosova television, two days after the Trial Panel handed down first instance convictions on September 16 against Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi for war crimes committed during the Kosovo war.

Thaçi and Krasniqi were sentenced to 25 years in prison, Veseli to 18 and Selimi to 13. Under the first instance ruling, all four were acquitted on the charge of crimes against humanity, since the panel did not find that the attack had been directed against the civilian population as such, but rather that victims had been picked out individually. The verdict is not final, and both the convicted men and the Prosecution can appeal it.

Hoxhaj watched the ruling from the courtroom gallery in The Hague and says he knew the sentence would be harsh even before the judge began reading it out.

“I was in the gallery, following the session up close. You could feel it in the air, even before the judge started reading the decision, that this was going to be a draconian verdict,” he said.

For him, the verdict is not just a legal matter.

“This court has, above all, struck at the backbone of the Kosovo state. At the very idea of liberation. At our political goal itself: independence,” Hoxhaj said, calling it one of the most serious blows Kosovo has suffered since 1999.

He also believes that if Pristina thinks the court rests on fabricated Serbian accusations without proper backing from Europe, it should completely rethink its political approach so far, including the dialogue with Belgrade.

“Why should I keep spending myself on normalizing relations between Kosovo and Serbia to meet the European Union’s expectations? No, absolutely not,” he said.

Hoxhaj announced that his signature would be the first if an initiative to abolish the court is launched in the Assembly, noting that PDK as a party has not yet taken an official position on the matter. On the verdict itself he remained categorical.

“For us, Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi are heroes. The KLA war is sacred. A verdict like this is worthless to us,” he said.

At the same time, he called for the protests in Pristina to continue, but without violence and without masked participants.

Can Kosovo’s Assembly even abolish the court?

While Hoxhaj is pushing for a political move in the Assembly, two lawyers laid out a very different picture of how much legal room parliament actually has to do something like that. They spoke on the show “KALLXO Përnime,” part of the same run of special programs Kosovo media have been devoting to the verdict these past few days.

Former ombudsperson Hilmi Jashari believes an attempt to simply abolish the Specialist Chambers would be all but impossible from a legal standpoint.

“It’s practically impossible to embark on such an adventure from a legal and legislative point of view,” he said.

He does see another opening, though, pointing to Article 162, paragraph 10 of Kosovo’s Constitution, which provides that the selection, appointment and oversight of judges and prosecutors are to be regulated by a separate law. Jashari argues that such a law has never actually been adopted in the form he believes that provision calls for.

“I believe such an intervention, through amendments to the law or a new law, could have a positive effect, and this is a subject worth looking into,” he said.

Lawyer Tom Gashi went further still. In his reading, Kosovo’s institutions no longer have the power to unilaterally change or abolish the Specialist Chambers’ legal framework, since the court’s mandate depends on European Union institutions.

“Not even 120 members of the Kosovo Assembly can change the Law on Specialist Chambers,” Gashi said, adding that the only real legal path forward is to get the verdict overturned on appeal.

“The only legal remedy is to work as hard, as properly and as well as possible so that this verdict gets overturned on appeal. Everything else we’re talking about is pointless,” he said.

The constitutional framework does support Gashi’s reading of the scope of the obligations involved, though not quite to the extent that he presents it as an absolute obstacle. The Specialist Chambers were set up through a constitutional amendment and a law the Kosovo Assembly passed in 2015, following Dick Marty’s report and a multi year investigation by the European Union’s Special Investigative Task Force. Under an interpretation Kosovo’s Constitutional Court upheld back in 2020, the court’s mandate runs until the Council of the European Union formally notifies Pristina that it is ending. Article 162 itself mentions a five year term, but it ties that term to the formal notification rather than to a calendar date, which means the date the mandate actually ends depends on Brussels, not on Kosovo’s parliament.

To the third voice in the debate, journalist and Koha Ditore founder Veton Surroi, the political mobilization around abolishing the court looks more dangerous than the verdict itself. In a nine point piece published today, he warns that Kosovo is “sliding into the language of its opponents,” while also pointing out that the verdict can only be changed through the appeals process.

“The idea of unilaterally abolishing the Specialist Chambers (which would also require a constitutional amendment, something with no realistic chance of happening in this situation) offers no legal remedy for overturning the verdict, nor for improving the position of the four convicted men on appeal,” Surroi wrote.

He also notes that the convicted men have nowhere else to turn outside the Kosovo and European judicial mechanism they themselves accepted.

“The four convicted men cannot bring the Specialist Chambers, or Kosovo, before the European Court of Human Rights, because Kosovo is not a party to the Convention,” he wrote.

His conclusion leaves little room for doubt.

“A change to the verdict can only be sought through the legal remedies provided for within the Specialist Chambers system,” Surroi wrote.

Srpske Novine previously reported that Kosovo Liberation Army veterans had demanded the removal of the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office leadership and changes to the law that established the court, a demand that only hardened after the first instance verdict, and which Hoxhaj has now joined with an even sharper political tone.

Surroi said that after these nine points he will also propose a platform for joint action in Kosovo. Whether the debate in the Assembly stays on the ground Jashari is proposing, meaning changes to the law on selecting and overseeing judges, or slides toward the direction Hoxhaj is pushing, will largely depend on what official position the PDK leadership ultimately takes on abolishing the court.