ICTY witnesses in former Kosovo leader trial too fearful to testify News
ICTY witnesses in former Kosovo leader trial too fearful to testify

[JURIST] The last two witnesses for the prosecution in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia case against former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj [ICTY backgrounder, PDF; BBC profile] and two other members of the Kosovo Liberation Army [FAS backgrounder] failed to testify on Wednesday citing fears that the ICTY would be unable to protect them. One of the scheduled witnesses was charged with contempt of court [press release] after refusing last week to testify against the defendants, saying that he had been threatened after previously testifying in a separate trial. The other witness remains hospitalized in Canada, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Lawyers for the defendants are expected to move for a dismissal of the case for insufficient evidence, a motion rarely granted at the court.

The trial against Haradinaj and his two co-defendants, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj [TrialWatch profiles], began in March [JURIST report] with outgoing chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte labeling Haradinaj a warlord and a mobster in uniform who committed "ugly, cruel and violent crimes." The defendants face 37 counts of war crimes, including murder, persecution, and rape [amended indictment, PDF], but Haradinaj has pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] to all charges. Haradinaj was a senior commander of the KLA, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force that opposed Slobodan Milosevic [advocacy website] during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

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On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

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