Kosovo Liberation Army

Appearance

The exact time of the creation of the Kosovo Liberation Army is unknown. One of the KLA leaders, Ramush Haradinay, claimed that she began operations in 1994 with the merger of several Albanian armed groups. The Hague Tribunal dated the creation of the KLA in the mid-1990s, and in 1996 the first attacks on the Yugoslav police occurred. Yugoslav generals Vilich and Todorovich wrote that it was formed in 1992 when the Kosovo Albanians decided to form underground detachments. According to the recollections of Colonel Tahir Zemaya, training for armed groups was initially conducted in Kosovo itself at local sports clubs. In 1993, the Albanians made an attempt to create the Ministry of Defense of Kosovo, however, many organizers of this action were arrested by the Yugoslav police ^[7] .

Organizationally, the KLA consisted of a headquarters located in Kukesh in Albania, and seven operational zones in Kosovo and Metohija. The 1st operational zone occupied the northern part of Central Kosovo, the 2nd — the north-east of Kosovo, the 3rd — the west of Kosovo, the 4th — the north of Kosovo, the 5th — the southern part of Central Kosovo, the 6th — the east of Kosovo, 7th - south of Kosovo. There were several “brigades” in each operational area of ​​the KLA, in reality each of them was the size of a battalion. Officially, they totaled a thousand fighters, divided into 20 companies of 50-60 people each, but in reality they were fewer ^[8] .

In 1998-1999 KLA members were trained by instructors from the CIA and the British Special Airborne Service. Their training was carried out on the territory of Albania in the camps in Kukesh, Tropoja, Bayram Kurri and Labinot ^[8] .

According to some reports, the KLA was seen in relations with al-Qaida in the late 1990s . According to The Washington Times, Western intelligence agencies reported that its members are being trained in al-Qaeda training camps ^[9] .

As part of the KLA, several units fought against the Yugoslav security forces, which were weakly controlled by the Albanian command. Among them: the Black Swans detachment of veterans of the Bosnian Muslim army, 400 people in the Albanian-American Atlantic brigade under the command of Garni Shehu, 120 fighters in the detachment from Iran, the Bosnian-Albanian detachment under the command of the Egyptian Abu Ismail, as well as numerous Mujahideen from Afghanistan, Algeria, Chechnya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Sudan ^[8] .

According to the Council on Foreign Relations , KLA was funded from the drug trade ^[4] .

According to Western researchers, the AOKs were funded by the Albanian diaspora from the USA and European countries ^[10] .

According to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia , the UN Security Council ^[11] and several other organizations ^[12] , the KLA is responsible for terrorist attacks in Kosovo and Metohija.

The Serbian authorities accuse the KLA of mass extermination and expulsion of the indigenous Serb population from Kosovo and Metohija ^[13] .

Accusations of trafficking in human organs

AOK has been repeatedly accused of trafficking in human organs ^[14] .

In 2008, former prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal Carla del Ponte published the book “ Hunting. I and war criminals ”, which described in detail about the abduction by Albanians in 1999 of 300 Serbs, Gypsies and Albanians who were not loyal to Hashim Tachi . According to del Ponte, the kidneys and heart were taken from the abductees. Bodies were transported to Europe, Israel and Turkey. Moreover, the prisoners remaining with one kidney were forced to wait for a client who wanted to get their second kidney. In the vicinity of Burrell in Albania, del Ponte found a house where organ harvesting operations were carried out. There were traces of blood, the remains of medicines and dressings. However, the ICTY did not initiate an investigation. According to del Ponte, officials from the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, led by future French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner , prevented the completion of an investigation into the crimes of Kosovo Albanians. Director of the Center for the Study of the Balkan Crisis of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and member of the Senate of the Republika Srpska Elena Guskova noted ^[15] :

On December 12, 2010, Dick Marty presented a report in Strasbourg at a meeting of the Council of Europe Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, in which he accused Hashim Thaci of trafficking in human organs. According to the report, the main role in this trade was played by the head of the medical service of the terrorist organization Kosovo Liberation Army, Sharip Muja, political adviser to the leader of the KLA and the prime minister of the self-proclaimed republic of Kosovo, Hashim Tachi. Moreover, in a special report, the name of Hashim Tachi is mentioned 27 times on 27 pages ^[16] . He and other members of the Drenitskaya Group are constantly called the main players in intelligence reports on Kosovo's organized crime structures. The Drenitskaya Group was engaged in contract killings, smuggling of weapons, drugs and human organs in Eastern Europe. And the donors were Serbian prisoners of war ^[15] . After that, the European Union and its civilian mission in Kosovo began collecting evidence ^[17] .

On September 10, 2012, the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor's Office published the testimony of a witness, a former soldier of the Kosovo Liberation Army. He talked about participating in a surgical operation during which a heart was removed from a Serbian prisoner. Whether the prisoner was alive or dead at the time the operation began, the witness did not specify. The witness also described the transportation of an organ to Rinas Airport near Tirana, the capital of Albania. According to him, the heart was then sold on the black market. In addition, the Albanian said that the fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army received special training in the extraction of organs from human bodies ^[18] .

• Adem Yashari
• Hashim Thachi
• Agim Cheku
• Ramush Haradinay

On June 21, 1999, the “Statement on the Demilitarization and Transformation of the Kosovo Liberation Army” was signed between the commander of the NATO forces in Kosovo, Michael Jackson and Hashim Thachi , according to which the KLA was reorganized into the Kosovo Defense Corps ^[19] . The new organization came under the control of the UN Special Representative in Kosovo and was entrusted with a wide variety of functions: rescue and restoration work in natural disasters, mine clearing, humanitarian aid delivery, etc. ^[19] .

In January 2016, it became known that a special court would be created in The Hague to investigate the AOK war crimes committed in 1999–2000 ^[20] . On September 5, 2016, American lawyer David Schwendiman was appointed chief prosecutor of the court ^[21] .

According to court representatives, in order to avoid possible pressure, Kosovo judges will not participate in its activities ^[22] . At the same time, PACE member Dick Marty stated that some witnesses who were supposed to appear before the court were already killed in order to hide the traces of crimes ^[23] .

• National Liberation Army (Macedonia)
• Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedzhi and Buyanovac
• Albanian National Army
• Chameria Liberation Army

• Guskova E.Yu. 1999 NATO aggression against Yugoslavia and the peace process .. - Moscow: Indrik, 2013. - 304 p. - ISBN 978-5-91674-270-1 .
• Guskova E.Yu. The history of the Yugoslav crisis (1990-2000). - M .: Russian Law / Russian National Fund, 2001. - 720 p. - ISBN 5941910037 .
• Albanian faces of the Hague Tribunal // International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: Activities, Results, Effectiveness. M., 2013.
• Tim Judah: Kosovo: War and Revenge. Yale University Press, New Haven, London 2000 ISBN 0-300-08313-0
• Lenard Cohen: Serpent in the bosom: the rise and fall of Slobodan Milošević, Westview Press, Bolder Colorado 2002 ISBN 0813340233
• Christian Jennings: Private US Firm Training Both Sides in the Balkans In: The Scotsman (Edinburgh) vom 3. März 2001
• R. Craig Nation. War in the Balkans 1991-2002. - US Army War College, 2003 .-- 388 p. - ISBN 1-58487-134-2 .
• Jens Reuter: Zur Geschichte der UÇK In: Jens Reuter / Konrad Clewing (Hrsg.): Der Kosovo Konflikt. Ursachen - Verlauf - Perspektiven , Bayerische Landeszentrale für politische Bildungsarbeit. Klagenfurt 2000, ISBN 3851293290
• Tim Ripley: The UCK's Arsenal in: Jane's Intelligence Review, November 2000
• Norbert Mappes-Niediek: Balkan-Mafia. Staaten in der Hand des Verbrechens-eine Gefahr für Europa. Berlin 2003. ISBN 3861-532840
• Dr N Thomas & K Mikulan. The Yugoslav Wars (2). Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia 1992-2001. - Osprey publishing, 2006. - ISBN 1-84176-964-9 .
• Henry H. Perritt. Kosovo Liberation Army: The Inside Story of an Insurgency. - University of Illinois Press , 2008 .-- 264 p. - ISBN 978-0-252-03342-1 .

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