Kosovo’s parliament passed a resolution calling for the release of Mitrovica police director Nehat Thaçi, who was arrested in Serbia on terrorism charges, and for the EU to intervene to ensure he is freed.
MPs in Pristina on Wednesday voted for a resolution proposed by the governing coalition calling for the immediate release of ,Nehat Thaçi who is in detention in Serbia, charged with staging a terrorist attack on a Serb family during the Kosovo war in 1999.
The resolution also urged the EU, “as a mediator and guarantor of the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia”, to intervene with the Serbian government to ensure Nehat Thaçi’s release.
It said that the Kosovo government should inform the EU that “such actions by Serbia in relation to Kosovo’s institutions and its citizens deeply threaten Kosovo-Serbia relations and the dialogue between the two countries, forcing us to reciprocate”.
It further called on the EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, to get involved in the Nehat Thaçi case, and asked Interpol to remove what it called “political arrest warrants” from its system.
The Kosovo government is obliged to implement the resolution now it has been approved by a majority of MPs.
Nehat Thaçi, who heads the police department in Kosovo’s Mitrovica area, was arrested at the Kosovo-Serbia border on September 28 on terrorism charges.
He told a court hearing in Belgrade on Monday that he denies charges accusing him of expelling a Serb family from the village of Lipljan during the Kosovo war in July 1999 and threatening them with a bomb.
“He declared that he is not guilty, and that he does not even know the [family] that was harmed. He also stated that he was not in the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] and that he is not on the list of KLA veterans,” Vladimir Gajic, one of Thaci’s lawyers, told Floripress.
Many former Kosovo Liberation Army members are on Serbian wanted lists, accused of terrorism, but the lists are not public.
The chairman of the Council for Protection of Rights and Freedoms in Kosovo, Behgjet Shala, warned recently that any Kosovo Albanian who was involved in the war could be at risk of arrest if they enter Serbia.