KLA Commander Offers Contradictory Evidence

Friday, 18 November, 2005

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Michael Farquhar

Having called a prominent former Kosovo Liberation Army commander to speak this week at the trial of three other former members accused of war crimes, prosecutors appeared to find his testimony a frustrating affair.

Suleiman Selimi - who had to be served with a subpoena before he would agree to testify for the prosecution - discussed the structure of the KLA in 1998 in the area around Lapusnik, where Fatmir Limaj, Isak Musliu and Haradin Bala are said to have operated a brutal prison camp.

His evidence – which also touched on the issue of discipline within the KLA – related largely to Limaj, the most senior of the three defendants who is charged partly on grounds of command responsibility.

Prosecutors argue that Limaj knew about the beatings and murders that allegedly occurred at the Lapusnik facility but failed to stop or punish them. For a conviction to be brought on these grounds, it needs to be shown that Limaj was responsible for the men working at the camp and was in a position to discipline them.

But prosecutor Julian Nicholls was clearly dissatisfied with Selimi’s evidence, at one point halting his testimony to read judges a series of quotations from previous interviews with the witness, which he said showed Selimi was withholding information in court on some points and contradicting himself on others.

As the testimony drew to an end after three days, it was still unclear to what extent the dispute stemmed from genuine evasiveness on the part of the witness, problems with interpretation in the courtroom or the complexity of the subject matter.

Selimi, now deputy commander of the protectorate’s civil emergency force, the Kosovo Protection Corps, was amongst the earliest members of the KLA in the Nineties.

In February 1998, he was involved in fighting with Serb security forces – an incident that later sparked the massacre of KLA founder Adem Jashari’s family, which was a milestone in the build-up to the conflict in Kosovo.

Selimi later became commander of the Drenica region, the rebel heartland which bordered Limaj’s area of responsibility. In 1999, when the KLA’s leadership was involved in the abortive Rambouillet peace talks in France, he temporarily became head of the organisation’s general staff.

In court this week, Selimi voiced respect for the tribunal as a democratic and independent instrument of justice.

But he also took the opportunity to publicly express the esteem in which he held the three accused and “all those who fought and shed their blood for the KLA”.

And it was clear where his loyalties lay as he went on to refer to Jashari throughout his entire testimony as “the legendary commander”, to his death as his “heroic fall” and to Albania as “the motherland”.

Selimi confirmed prosecution claims that Limaj had returned to Kosovo from abroad in March 1998 to join the KLA. But some of his evidence muddied the waters as to what role he played within the organisation immediately after that.

Prosecutors claim that Limaj was made a regional commander, based in Klecke, where he was responsible for a number of units in the surrounding area and indeed formed several units himself. Some of these, they say, took on his own nickname “Celiku”, meaning “steel”.

After the KLA took control of Lapusnik in May, they argue, the village – and the prison camp that allegedly existed there from May until July – were Limaj’s responsibility. They say the unit stationed at Lapusnik was known as Celiku 3.

Much of Selimi’s evidence dovetailed with this account. He spoke about his own involvement in the May battle for Lapusnik, confirmed having heard Limaj referred to as “Commander Celiku” in 1998 and also said he thought Limaj was based in Klecke.

But referring to the period up until the May battle for Lapusnik, Selimi claimed Limaj was in charge of just one of the several Celiku units, each of which he said operated independently of the others.

When Nicholls later inquired who was in command of the Celiku units in the crucial period from May until July, Selimi insisted they had remained without an overall commander for as long as they existed.

And when he was asked how these units acquired their common name, the witness claimed not to know.

After the first day of questioning, Nicholls asked for Selimi to be taken out of the courtroom before explaining to the judges that his testimony in court lay in stark contrast with information he had given in earlier interviews with prosecution investigators, with defence lawyers and with the Kosovo magazine Zeri.

In those interviews, he argued, citing quotations from transcripts, it had been quite clear that Selimi knew Limaj was in overall command of the Celiku units and that he thought they had been named after him.

Nicholls also protested that in court it had taken “a lot of questioning and going around the houses” before the witness would even admit the simple fact that commanders had the power to dismiss men from the KLA as a disciplinary measure. This was in contrast with a prosecution interview, he argued, where Selimi said this happened frequently.

Presiding Judge Kevin Parker acknowledged that it was possible to interpret the instances given as examples of evasiveness. But he still denied Nicholls’ request to treat Selimi as a hostile witness, which would have allowed him to use leading questions and confront him with his earlier testimonies.

Later Selimi, apparently aware of the prosecution’s dissatisfaction, jumped to his own defence, reminding the court that he had sworn to tell the truth and saying it was possible that he had forgotten some facts during earlier examinations.

Besides inevitable problems stemming from simultaneous translation in the courtroom – which sometimes seem to leave lawyers and witnesses speaking at complete cross-purposes – it is possible that another contributing factor might have been the complexity and ambiguity of the subject matter at hand.

Selimi said that as the KLA developed a clearer structure later in 1998, Limaj was appointed commander of the 121st brigade which absorbed men from some of the Celiku units.

But it appeared from his testimony that the process of consolidation that resulted in such major organisational changes was long and gradual – and this appeared to have something to do, at least at times, with his vagueness about how the organisation functioned at specific points in the transition period.

At the end of the January 18 session the court bade farewell to Andrew Cayley, the lawyer who has thus far been in charge of the prosecution team working on the case. Cayley explained that his departure had been planned for some time and was unrelated to the trial.

Cayley’s colleague Alex Whiting will take over the case and another lawyer will join the team later this month.

The prosecution is due to begin examining a new witness on January 24.

Michael Farquhar is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.