Public Intelligence Blog

Crime without punishment, power without responsibility – Kosovo, international policy and the rule of law

Unless the international community demonstrates it is serious abouthuman rights, restitution and disrupting organised crime and criminality, its current policy of stability in place of justice can only continue to fuel both injustice and instability.

Learn more about the principles of conflict transformation!

TransConflist, 4 October 2012

By James McDonald

On 28 June 1999, Petrija Prljević, a 57 year-old woman in Pristina, was abducted from her apartment by men dressed in KLA uniforms. She was never seen alive again: a year later, her body was exhumed from a cemetery in Kosovo’s capital and positively identified by her son after he recognised items of her clothing. The job of finding out who caused her death was not investigated by the new prosecutors’ office on the basis that she died after the “war” in Kosovo had ended; instead it was investigated by the Eulex Rule of Law Mission. Over ten years later her relatives are still trying to find out what happened to her and who was responsible. Eulex seem no closer to launching an investigation to identify and prosecute her murderers, like the vast majority of the more than 1,000 other cases of murdered Serbs since NATO forces entered Kosovo. Contrast this with the efficient way in which Eulex’s Rule of Law Mission initiated investigations to find the persons responsible for the killing of a member of ROSU in summer 2011. As a recent Amnesty International report made clear, murders continue to be carried out with impunity under the gaze of an international community which seems peculiarly reluctant to investigate them. Indeed, while numerous Yugoslav officials have been tried and convicted for crimes against humanity committed by security forces under their command prior to June 1999, the fact is that of the more than 1,000 Serbs who have been killed since the end of the conflict, almost none have resulted in a prosecution, let alone a conviction. On the contrary, according to the testimony of some international police officials who have worked in Kosovo, there have been active attempts by some elements of the international administration to obstruct investigations, especially when they have threatened to implicate high-ranking Kosovo politicians.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Kosovo – Crime without Punishment, Power without Responsibility”