Former Kosovo official held on contempt granted provisional release by UN tribunal

The United Nations war crimes tribunal set up in the wake of the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s has ordered the provisional release of a former Kosovo official who has completed a three-month sentence for contempt of court for witness tampering during the trial of former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj.

Bajrush Morina was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which is based in The Hague, for attempting to persuade a protected witness, with the codename PW, not to testify against the former leader.

Mr. Haradinaj, who was also a prominent commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the conflict with Serb forces in 1998-99, was acquitted in April last year by the ICTY of a series of charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, torture, abduction, cruel treatment, imprisonment and the forced deportation of Serbian and Kosovar Roma civilians.

When they announced the verdict, the judges said the Tribunal had encountered many difficulties in securing testimony from witnesses during the trials of Mr. Haradinaj and his two co-accused. Prosecutors later filed an appeal, describing what they called the “prevailing circumstances of intimidation and fear.”

Mr. Morina, who had been adviser to the Deputy Minister for Culture, Youth and Sport of Kosovo and a newspaper editor, was convicted on 17 December 2008 along with co-accused Astrit Haraqija, the government minister of the same department.

The former adviser spent a total of three months in the Tribunal’s Detention Unit, where he was held for a few weeks during his initial appearance in court and again at the time of his trial.

Both the Prosecution and the Defence have appealed the ICTY’s judgement to release Mr. Morina, whose freedom is now dependent on the outcome of the Appeals judgement.