Europe News

EU police seek Kosovo premier's top aide for war crimes

Mar 16, 2011, 22:34 GMT

Pristina/Belgrade - One of Kosovo's leading politicians, Fatmir Limaj, said Wednesday that the European Union's law-enforcing mission (EULEX) has issued a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of war crimes.

The deputy leader of Prime Minister Hashim Thaci's Democratic Party, Limaj told Kosovo's RTK television that he was immediately going to turn himself in at the Pristina district court.

EULEX on Wednesday arrested eight people in Kosovo in connection with war crime allegations, including the police commander in Prizren, a city in southern Kosovo, according to media reports in Pristina and Belgrade.

The arrests are reportedly linked to crimes that the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) allegedly committed against Serbs and Albanians during its fight for independence from Serbia in 1998-99.

As many other Kosovo politicians, including Thaci, Limaj, 40, was a member of the KLA. He already went on trial at the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, but was cleared in 2005 and in an appeal in 2007.

EULEX is also investigating Limaj, the transport and telecommunications minister in Thaci's previous government, for corruption and money laundering.

Thaci found himself in the middle of unwanted attention late last year, when a Council of Europe accused him of being at the heart of organized crime in Kosovo.

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