In a proposal published in his Facebook profile, Bajrami seeks to mobilise local judicial expertise and a co-ordinated institutional commitment of the Republic of Kosovo, stressing that the next phase of the process should focus on legal arguments, testing analysis and identification of possible material and procedural violations.
According to Bajram, the commission should be composed of judges and former judges, prosecutors, criminal lawyers, criminal law professors and international criminal law experts. He proposes that this mechanism be professional, pluralistic and independent of party influences.
The commission’s mandate, under the proposal, would include full judicial analysis of the act, review of the management manner and assessment of evidence, analysis of individual criminal responsibility, and identification of possible counterarguments between the evidence and the court’s findings.
Bajrami also proposes that the commission prepare a comprehensive legal document that would be made available to defence teams as complementary expertise for drafting complaints.
The upcoming battle is exclusively judicial, Bajrami emphasises in his proposal, arguing that the protection of the accused should be based on concrete evidence, professional arguments and standards of international criminal law.
It requires that the commission’s work be carried out in parallel with the commitment of defence teams, without expecting the outcome of expertise and not jeopardising the procedural terms of complaint.
In the published document, academic Bajrami identifies several key aspects where, according to him, judicial analysis should focus on the second degree. These include consisting of the actual situation, individual criminal responsibility, the credibility of witnesses, the historical context of the war in Kosovo, the organisational and command structure of the KLA, as well as claims of the existence of a plan or criminal goal.
Special attention to Bajrami also costs access to witnesses and additional evidence that could be presented in the complaint procedure. He estimates that protection should build a broader provative base by focusing on witnesses with direct knowledge of concrete events, locations, and organizational structures.
His proposal includes the request for independent international monitoring of the standards of fair judgment in Specialised Chambers. In this direction, Bajrami requires engagement by international professional organisations and attention to the standards of the European Convention for Human Rights, the presumption of innocence, arms equality and the right to effective protection.
It also proposes that the highest institutions of Kosovo, including the president, prime minister and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, develop a co-ordinated diplomatic commitment with the donor states of Kosovo’s Specialised Chambers and Friend states, in order to seek support for independent monitoring and international judicial expertise.
A special portion of the proposal, Bajrami also devoted to Croatia’s experience in the case of generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač, who were originally sentenced to the first degree by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, while on 16 November 2012, they were released from the Appeals Chamber.
He proposes that this case be studied in terms of standards of testing assessment, individual criminal responsibility and the way the Appeals Chamber had reviewed the first-degree findings.
In the conclusion, Bajrami proposes eight concrete measures, including the establishment of the state commission, preparing judicial expertise, identifying additional evidence and witnesses, engagement of international experts, independent monitoring and activating Kosovo diplomacy.
The KLA war must be defended through historical truth, while the innocence of the accused should be argued through evidence and standards of criminal law, says academics’ proposal Arsim Bajrami.
He concludes his stance with the request that Kosovo institutions act without delay, stressing that local judicial experts and institutional co-ordination should be engaged immediately, while defence teams must maintain their professional autonomy and respect the terms of the complaint procedure.
Source Layer: RTKLive
