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AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu
Ramush Haradinaj
# The Hague
Former Prime Minister of Kosovo acquitted of war crimes
The former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj had been accused of murder and torture during the Kosovo war – but has been found not guilty.
THE UN YUGOSLAV war crimes court has acquitted Kosovo’s ex-prime minister Ramush Haradinaj and two aides in a retrial on charges of murder and torture during the 1990s war of independence from Belgrade.
“The chamber finds you not guilty on all counts in the indictment,” Judge Bakone Justice Moloto told the court in The Hague this morning, ordering the men released.
Judges found that the accused had not taken part in a “joint criminal enterprise” to cleanse the area of ethnic Serbs, and that some witness testimony was unreliable.
Moloto said one witness may not have been in the Jablanica detention camp where alleged abuses took place and “may have told what he heard from others.”
Following one incident of abuse “a KLA soldier apologised for the incident and blamed it on extremist groups within the KLA,” the judge said.
“There is no credible evidence that Haradinaj was even aware of the crimes committed at Jablanica,” Moloto said.
