US loses bid to extradite Kosovo suspect using old Serbia treaty

Jul 16, 2010, 16:52 GMT

Brussels/Pristina, Kosovo - The United States failed Friday in a bid to have a terrorism suspect extradited from Kosovo by using a treaty signed over 100 years ago with Serbia, with judges questioning whether the document has any legal status.

The US was one of the first states to recognize Kosovo when it declared independence from Serbia in 2008. But the two countries do not have an extradition agreement.

US officials thus invoked a treaty with the Kingdom of Serbia that had been signed in October 1901, in their bid to have Bajram Asllani handed over.

Judges from the European Union mission in Kosovo 'rejected the case on several grounds. Among them, (they) questioned the current validity of the Extradition Treaty of October 21, 1901 between the US and the Kingdom of Serbia,' an EU statement said.

Asllani, also known as Ebu Hatab, was arrested in June under suspicion of helping a US-based network plot terrorist attacks.

After Kosovo declared independence, 22 out of the 27 EU members recognized it as a new state. The bloc sent a mission known as EULEX to help build up the new-born country's legal system.

The US also accepted Kosovo's independence. The judges of EULEX said that move, at the very least, called into question the validity of the 1901 US-Serbia deal.

A subsequent 'exchange of diplomatic notes between the US and Kosovo on the extradition of Asllani does not constitute an international treaty' that could replace it, the district court in the town of Mitrovica said.

Officials also noted that even if the treaty was still valid, it would not cover terrorism crimes such as those attributed to Asllani.

'The individual is now free to go back to his own business,' a EULEX spokesman told the German Press Agency dpa.