Former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj was detained yesterday in Slovenia on a Serbian arrest warrant, a week after Bosnian Muslim ex-military commander Naser Oric was held in Switzerland at Belgrade's request.
Serbia accuses both men of committing war crimes against ethnic Serbs during the Balkan wars of the 1990s – charges on which they were acquitted several years ago by the United Nations tribunal in The Hague.
Anger among Bosnian Muslims at Mr Oric’s arrest prompted Serbian president Tomislav Nikolic this week to cancel what would have been his first official visit to Bosnia, and Mr Haradinaj’s detention is likely to enrage Kosovars.
“I don’t see this as just personally offensive, I see it as being offensive to Kosovo,” Mr Haradinaj said yesterday after being stopped at Ljubljana airport on his way back to Kosovo from Germany.
“Since 2012 I have travelled to various countries, including the US and European countries, and had no problems,” he told the Balkan Insight news service.
Mr Haradinaj, who was nicknamed “Rambo” when he fought for Kosovar guerrillas against Serb forces during their 1998-9 war, said he had been wrongly held on a warrant that was no longer valid. He served as Kosovo’s premier for 100 days in 2004-5 before travelling voluntarily to The Hague to face trial, for allegedly torturing and killing Serbs and ethnic-Albanians who collaborated with them.
Cleared
Mr Haradinaj (46) was cleared in 2008, and at a re-trial four years later.
He returned to politics, and last month met Taoiseach Enda Kenny during a visit to Dublin.
Mr Haradinaj was in the company of Michael O’Reilly, a lawyer and former Fine Gael strategist, who has written a book about the role he played in leading the ex-premier’s legal defence. Mr Haradinaj’s detention will fuel ill feeling between mostly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo and Serbia, which refuses to recognise the independence of its one-time province.
Tension is rising across much of former Yugoslavia, ahead of next month’s 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces, and with Macedonia mired in a deep political crisis.
