Unwilling witness in Haradinaj trial gets two months for contempt

Sep 16, 2011, 15:08 GMT

The Hague - The United Nations war crimes tribunal on Friday sentenced a witness against former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj for his refusal to testify.

The witness, Shefqet Kabashi, will serve two months for contempt of court after he refused to answer questions in the Haradinaj case, The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said.

Haradinaj is presently on a partial re-trial under charges of war crimes he was allegedly responsible for as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commander during the 1998-99 war in the former province.

Haradinaj, who briefly served as Kosovo prime minister, was cleared of all charges in his first trial, but the ICTY ordered a re-trial amid concerns that witnesses had been intimidated into silence.

One of the two crucial witnesses whose testimony was not secured during the first trial was Kabashi.

A rebel commander-turned-politician, Haradninaj, along with his two co-defendants now face six counts of charges relating to the torture and murder of prisoners in the camp his guerrillas ran in Jablanica.

Kabashi, himself a Kosovo Albanian who fought for the KLA, did not explain the reason for refusing to testify.

Serbian media have reported that witnesses in the Haradinaj trial had been intimidated, and, in several cases, killed in order not to present evidence. But the ICTY recently denied those reports.

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