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The former commander of the KLA General Staff, Agim Ceku, was questioned today before the Special Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague as a suspect, but the public still does not know what the former member of the terrorist organization and former prime minister of Kosovo is accused of.
Ceku confirmed in early September that he had received a subpoena from The Hague, but the details of the indictment are unknown, as in the case of the President of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci. By the way, he is one of the highest ranking members of the KLA who was summoned to The Hague as a defendant.
Although the details of the Hague indictment are not known, which has yet to be confirmed, the things that are in the indictments of the Serbian courts in regards to Ceku are known. According to the Serbian court order, he was arrested and detained three times, but was never extradited to Serbia.
Responsible for the death of Serbian and non-Albanian civilians in Kosovo
What is supposed is that it could contain some points about the crimes for which Serbia accuses him, for crimes committed against Serbs and not Albanians during the 1998/99 war in Kosovo and Metohija.
As a former KLA commander, Serbia tried Ceku in absentia for command responsibility in connection with the deaths of 669 Serbs and 18 other non-Albanians.
The indictment alleges that from early 1998 to early 2000, Hashim Thaci and Agim Ceku, along with other members of the KLA and Albanian armed groups, planned and carried out terrorist actions in Kosovo and Metohija as part of a campaign of persecution and ethnic cleansing. Hundreds of civilians from all walks of life, including women, children, the elderly and the sick, were killed or seriously injured.
All these actions were organized by the KLA Chief of Staff.
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and Belgrade asked Interpol to issue an international “red order”.
In 2006, the Serbian government asked UNMIK to prevent the appointment of Ceku as prime minister of Kosovo. In one of the conclusions of the then government headed by Vojislav Kostunica, it was written that “the Serbian Interior Ministry sent a criminal report to the Hague Court in the form of relevant information against Agim Ceku for war crimes.”
Serbia has called on UNMIK to react
A report sent to The Hague by the Interior Ministry, prepared by the War Crimes Investigation Service, stated that Ceku was charged with genocide, organizing a group and inciting the commission of genocide and war crimes and war crimes. The report cites acts committed by Ceku, from those in Croatia to those in Kosovo.
According to the MUP, in early 1998, Ceku became a member of the KLA and was appointed Chief of the General Staff and Deputy Commander of the KLA General Staff. With these functions, according to the Interior Ministry, “in the Kosovo and Metohija area, in the absence of the commander, he had to approve all the plans for armed activity and attack.”
Ceku is charged with murder, kidnapping and destruction of facilities, including the Serbian Orthodox Church, under his command. Not only Serbs but also large numbers of Roma died.
The Interior Ministry also supported the complaints with the names, dates and descriptions of the murders and kidnappings. Ceku is in charge of planning, inciting and ordering the commission of crimes during the NATO bombing period. Upon the arrival of international troops in Kosovo, in accordance with the command’s responsibility for the mass kidnappings of Serbs.
– On May 26, 1999, around 6 pm in the village of Klinčina, Peć municipality, members of the KLA under the command and control of the applicant carried out an armed terrorist attack against civilians Dragan Šoškić, Zvonimir and Mileva, Jovan Stojanović, who were driving an Opel Corsa. Dragan Šoškić and Jovan Stojanović, Jovan Stojanović, were killed, while Mileva Šoškić suffered serious bodily injuries; This is just one of the many complaints made by the Ministry of the Interior.
Upon the arrival of international forces, in addition to reports of the dead, data on the destruction of religious buildings are also presented.
– In the village of Koriša, Prizren municipality, they demolished and heavily damaged, and then completely destroyed with explosives the Orthodox Church of Saint Mark Koriški, the Serbian Ministry of the Interior declared at the time.
Detained as a Croatian citizen
Based on this arrest warrant, Ceku was detained and expelled several times in various countries, but these arrests did not “bear fruit” and he never appeared before the prosecutor in Serbia.
He was arrested while trying to cross the borders of Bulgaria, Slovenia and Hungary. It “fell” for the first time in Slovenia in 2003.
The airport police in this country arrested him while he was waiting for a plane to Pristina, and on that occasion he was carrying a Croatian passport. As a citizen of Croatia, he was arrested the following year in Hungary, while in 2009 the state of Colombia expelled him from its territory, after he came there to participate in an international seminar on disarmament.
Participated in “Storm”
Before becoming one of the KLA chiefs, Agim Ceku, as an officer of the former JNA, went to serve in the Croatian army in the military operations “Storm” and “Medak Pocket”, and in May 1999 he was appointed commander of the called KLA.
As then head of the Croatian artillery of the “Velebit” sector, Ceku also participated in the “Pirate” operation. On that occasion, the artillery under the command of Ceku indiscriminately bombarded the depths of the area of the Benkovac and Obrovac municipalities, so that the civilians suffered the most.
Accusations in Kosovo and Metohija
Several years ago, an accusation was brought against Cekuu in Kosovo, this time for misuse of the pension fund.
He, along with 12 other people, including the Minister of the Security Forces, Rustem Berisha, to whom he was a deputy, was accused of falsely registering war veterans. As the media wrote at the time, they falsely registered thousands of people as “war veterans” of the KLA and thus damaged the budget by some € 68 million.
About 40,000 of them have been registered as war veterans, and the prosecution says that half did not participate in the so-called “war of liberation” during the 1998/99 conflict.
VIDEO: Thaci received in Kosovo with a shout of “KLA”
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