War Crimes Trail

Things have gotten interesting here over the last 2 days politically. A war crimes trial started Monday and there has been a noticeable increase in the military presence. They are using the sports center for the trial due to security concerns and there was light armor in front of the facility with lots of troops and cops. Roads closed as they transported the accused. They are members of the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army-Albanian) as this is the balancing act of getting both Serbian and Albanians responsible for atrocities.

Then today they (KFOR) tried to arrest the leader of the majority political party for war crimes and he was able to flee. I was at the NDI office at the time (the group we may work for in Eurasia) when the mission director got the call. With this and the trial "internationals" may want to stay low as protests are expected if the trials & protests of last summer hold true. There have been a couple of bomb scares and we thought we heard an explosion earlier this evening. When we returned from the cyber cafe a side road that lead toward the UN complex was closed by the police-so who knows. The cyber cafe was closed the other day as were other business in the area for a bomb search. We still feel safe as we're in a mostly Albanian housing complex and have been making friends.

Of course many more stories have come in regarding the arrest.  There is a feeling here that the Albanians accused of war crimes are being treated differently that the Serbs.  Apparently the Serbs are given advance notice of their arrest and are allowed to get their personal lives in order before going to the Hauge for the trial. The Albanians are not notified and a SWAT type arrest is conducted.

As it turns out he was in Austria when they tried to arrest him and he fled to Slovenia. There he had a press conference and scolded the UN for tring to arrest him they way they did. Stated that he always had said that he would go peacefully and questioned why he wasn’t afforded the same respect as the accused Serb war criminals. He then turned himself in. Several days later there were large demonstration here protesting his arrest. I wanted to go and get some pictures but was warned that this wasn’t a good idea. I followed that advise.