KLA Snake
Snake in Prime Minister’s Cabinet: Hashim Thaci on Arrest Warrant Since 1997
Hashim Thaci, whose Democratic Party of Kosovo won at the recent parliamentary elections in Serbian province of Kosovo, has been on an arrest warrant list, which the police in Kosovo-Metohija issued upon the order of the District Court in Pristina, for ten years now, the Belgrade daily Politika reminded on Tuesday.
The arrest warrant specifies that Thaci, who goes under the name of Snake, is a member of an ethnic Albanian terrorist gang, a commander of the so-called KLA Political Directorate, and that he has taken part in a number of terrorist attacks against members of the police in southern Serbian province, because of which the District Court in Pristina has sentenced him in absentia to ten years in prison.
By the Court Council verdict, Thaci and his 14 fellow fighters were found guilty on July 11, 1997 of a number of terrorist acts.
Trained and Infiltrated from Albania to Terrorize Serbian Province
The Court Council found that, starting with 1992 when they infiltrated Serbian Kosovo province from Albania where they were trained, members of the group formed the terrorist gang under Thaci’s leadership. Their goal was to “inflict organized and coordinated acts of violence throughout southern Serbian province, inspired by the political goal of severing this region from Serbia and forming a separate state in its territory.”
The accused Hashim Thaci, along with fourteen members of his gang, have been found guilty on all counts of the indictment which charged them with the preparation, planning and execution of the attacks on members of the Yugoslav police since May 13, 1993. Armed with automatic rifles, guns and hand grenades, they were ambushing the official police vehicles and killing police officers throughout the province in the 1990s. Apart from ambushing and attacking police officers, Thaci’s gang also organized an attack on Secondary school center (they threw hand grenades into the students’ rooms) and a terrorist attack on the military barracks in Vucitrn, where the Yugoslav Army conscripts were trained, in 1996.
According to the Pristina District Court verdict from July 1997, the main characteristic of this criminal gang was conducting terrorist acts simultaneously in the number of Kosovo-Metohija towns. The police was being attacked at the same time in Vucitrn, Podujevo, Mitrovica, along with attacks on the centers for internally displaced and the attacks on residents of Serbian nationality in the towns of Decani, Stimlje and Pec.
Criminal Charges Against Thaci and Ceku in the Hague Tribunal Amended in 2002
The daily reminds that the Serbian Interior Ministry presented to The Hague Tribunal in 2002 an amendment to the criminal charges filed against Thaci and Agim Ceku, which, for most of its part, refer to crimes committed against members of the Roma population.
The charges that were filed against Thaci, as a political and military leader of KLA, and Ceku, as chief of staff of the KLA Headquarters, refer to the acts of violation of the Geneva Convention, violation of law and customs of war, genocide and crimes against humanity.
In the charges, the Serbian Interior Ministry specified the acts of murder of 18 Roma people, which were committed by KLA members under Thaci's and Ceku's command.
The document also specifies the same number of attempted murders, more than 10 rapes and rape attempts, 41 incidents of kidnapping. According to the Interior Ministry, at the time there was no information as regards the fate of 30 kidnapped people, over 50 cases referring to the KLA members’ forcing the Roma to leave Kosovo, whose houses were, as rule, plundered and then torched or destroyed by explosive devices.
According to the Interior Ministry, all the victims were civilians and only a few of them dared resist the KLA terror, the daily Politika reported.