Kosovo: President Thaci Pardons ‘Revenge Killers’

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By Die Morina

President Hashim Thaci signed a decree to pardon three former Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas convicted of killing a family in 2001 in revenge because one of them served with the Serbian police.

Thaci on Friday signed the decree pardoning Arben Kiqina and brothers Arsim Ramadani and Burim Ramadani, who were jailed for murdering the Hajra family in 2001, allegedly because the father of the family was a police officer under Slobodan Milosevic’s rule.

A total of five men were convicted of killing the Hajra family near Glogoc/Glogovac in central Kosovo in August 2001, all former Kosovo Liberation Army members involved in fighting Serbian forces during the late 1990s conflict.

Burim Ramadani, Arsim Ramadani and Arben Kiqina were jailed for 30 years, Jeton Kiqina for 16 years and Blerim Kiqina for 11 years.

The family died when their car came under fire from automatic weapons.

According to an EU rule-of-law mission, EULEX report, the father, Hamze Hajra, was targeted out of revenge for being a member of the police force under Milosevic.

Hajra’s youngest daughter was the only one who survived the attack.

Balkan Insight

The Balkan Insight (formerly the Balkin Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN) is a close group of editors and trainers that enables journalists in the region to produce in-depth analytical and investigative journalism on complex political, economic and social themes. BIRN emerged from the Balkan programme of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, IWPR, in 2005. The original IWPR Balkans team was mandated to localise that programme and make it sustainable, in light of changing realities in the region and the maturity of the IWPR intervention. Since then, its work in publishing, media training and public debate activities has become synonymous with quality, reliability and impartiality. A fully-independent and local network, it is now developing as an efficient and self-sustainable regional institution to enhance the capacity for journalism that pushes for public debate on European-oriented political and economic reform.

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