Kosovo Albanian arrested for intimidating war crimes witness

Kosovo Albanian arrested for intimidating war crimes witness
Deutsche Presse-Agentur - November 2, 2004

Pristina - The United Nations police in Kosovo arrested an ethnic Albanian for intimidating witnesses set to testify in the upcoming war crimes trial against three ethnic Albanian former guerrillas, the U.N. Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) said Tuesday.

Beqe Beqaj was arrested following the request filed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte and will be extradited to The Hague on Thursday.

He was charged with intimidation of witnesses in the case against three former commanders of the guerrilla group UCK - Fatmir Limaj, Hajredin Balaj and Isak Musliu - whose trial is sheduled to start in mid-November.

"The suspect says that he knows some people linked with the case, but denies that he had threatened them," Beqaj's lawyer and former prominent Kosovo communist official Azem Vllasi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa.

"If found guilty, Beqaj could face a seven year prison sentence," he said.

Del Ponte recently said she has been "having trouble in the process of building the charges against Kosovo Albanians because witnesses were too scared to testify".

She also blasted the UNMIK for failing to protect possible witnesses.

"You cannot think how many problems we have in the investigations against UCK leaders in Kosovo. There are big threats against the witnesses there and now they do not want to cooperate", del Ponte said. dpa ra mga

November 2, 2004, Tuesday - 17:52:49 Central European Time