The publication of a list of over 20,000 alleged fake war veterans and the indictment of officials who verified them has infuriated Kosovo Liberation Army ex-guerrillas - particularly those who found their names on the list.

Kosovo is still struggling to find out the real number of people who took up arms to fight against Serbian forces at the end of the 1990s - and the issue of who really fought and who didn’t has now become more controversial than ever.

The long, contested process of the verification of war veterans, which started after the approval of a law in 2011, became a topic of heated debate again last week when the Kosovo Special Prosecution indicted 12 members of the government’s verification commission amid claims that thousands who never fought in the war have been falsely registered as ex-guerrillas.

Among those charged was Agim Ceku, a former KLA commander, former prime minister of Kosovo and former Kosovo Security Force minister who was the head of the verification commission.

Verified veteran’s status makes ex-fighters eligible to claim benefits, and some observers believe that some non-combatants have sought to secure this status for financial gain.

Before the indictment was issued, special prosecutor Elez Blakaj drew up a list of 19,000 names of suspected fraudsters during his investigation into fake veterans.

Blakaj prepared an indictment that included the list of 19,000 names. But then he resigned from his job last month, claiming that he had been threatened by “known and unknown people” who wanted him to drop the probe.

He now insists that 2,000 additional names were added to the list after he quit.

Muhamet Lani, 69, found himself on the list of alleged fake veterans, but insists he was a member of the KLA’s logistics service in the guerrilla force’s Drenica Zone during the 1998-99 conflict.

However, Lani believes the problem of fake veterans is genuine, and argued that the inclusion of his name and other real veterans in the list was done “to discredit Elez Blakaj’s work”.

“I will hand over lots of documents to the court which can prove what Elez Blakaj included in his indictment. I am sure there are many more than 19,000 fake veterans,” Lani told BIRN.

The larger list of over 20,000 alleged fake veterans was published by Kosovo media last week after it was leaked from the prosecution.

Publication of the list caused anger among many ex-fighters, with one veterans’ association saying that it offended their “dignity and integrity as warriors”.

Some immediately offered what they said was proof that they really were members of the KLA, including wartime photos and other documents.

One of names on the list was that of MP Time Kadrijaj from Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj’s Alliance for the Future of Kosovo party, who responded by posting pictures on Facebook of herself wearing a KLA uniform.

Fake veterans ‘cost Kosovo money’

Blakaj is now in self-imposed exile in the US, from where he told BIRN that based on the law, only war veterans and invalids are entitled to pensions, even though the law recognises other legal categories of ex-fighter such as ‘participating veteran’ and ‘member’ of the armed resistance against Yugoslav forces.

He said that the fake veterans had cost Kosovo a lot of money.

“During this [verification] process, the state budget and genuine veterans have been seriously damaged,” he said.

Blakaj maintains that the indictment that was filed to the Pristina court was changed by the prosecutor who inherited the case from him after he resigned.

“I think this could be cleared up by a just and impartial trial process. Only this way can we reveal the truth about the illegal process of the recognition of veterans’ status,” he said.

“My indictment was based on facts… but it has been changed from the version I have drafted because there are 2,000 more names about which I have no information, how they have been selected and how they were included in the indictment,” he continued.

The Kosovo prosecution said last week that the number rose during the investigation after it was revealed that there had been applications from members of the Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac Liberation Army - an ethnic Albanian guerrilla force, which was seeking to unite this part of southern Serbia with Kosovo in the late 1990s - who failed to provide evidence that they were members of the KLA. The Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac Liberation Army fighters were disarmed in 2001 following an internationally-brokered peace deal.

However, the law approved by the Kosovo parliament provides veterans’ status only to KLA members registered during the period from 1997 to 1999.

Legal experts in Kosovo have suggested that the law that determines the status of war veterans is defective and has loopholes.

“The law on veterans has been created without information about how this law would apply to veterans,” Kosovo lawyer Kujtim Kerveshi told Pristina-based TV station Dukagjini.

Kerveshi said he was also surprised that the KLA has not developed a list of genuine members.

“We’ve come to a situation in which we don’t have a KLA archive,” he said.

Despite the row over the list in the days since it was leaked and published by media, Kerveshi pointed out that the names on the list are not the subjects of the indictment.

“The subjects of the indictment are members of the [government] commission who were in charge of fulfilling their obligations according to the law,” he said.

Now that the verification of ex-fighters has lost public credibility, veterans’ associations are suggesting that the government start the lengthy process all over again.

“We ask the Kosovo government to start a re-evaluation of the entire process through a commission and work based on exact criteria defined by the Law on KLA Veterans,” the head of the KLA War Veterans’ Association, Hysni Gucati, told media last Wednesday.

As part of this re-evaluation, Gucati added, the prosecution should withdraw its accusations against those who it described as fakers.



http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/arti...las-09-21-2018