Ex-Kosovo Leader Facing War Crimes Trial

[Omaha Steve]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070304/D8NLHKB00.html

Ex-Kosovo Leader Facing War Crimes Trial
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Mar 4, 2:11 PM (ET)

By MIKE CORDER

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Ramush Haradinaj, who was once a nightclub bouncer and martial arts expert and rose to become a guerrilla chieftain and Kosovo's prime minister, faces trial in which he is accused of mounting an ethnic cleansing campaign against Serbs.

His future will be decided by a panel of U.N. judges in the war crimes trial opening Monday in which he and two others are accused. They are pleading innocent, and many Kosovars believe it is their struggle against Serbian rule that is on trial.

Haradinaj flew to the Netherlands a week ago and was put in a cell in the Hague court's detention unit, where co-defendants Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj have been held since 2005. Hundreds of supporters saw him off, and Prime Minister Agim Ceku backed him in a radio address.


Kosovo's former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj looks on during a press conference in Kosovo's capital Pristina prior leaving for the U.N. court in The Hague, Netherlands, in this file photo taken on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2007. Haradinaj, leader of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, will appear before the U.N. war crimes tribunal on March 5 on charges of involvement in a criminal plot to expel Serbs and suspected Serb collaborators from a western Kosovo region using a campaign of murder, mistreatment and rape (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

"He is going to the Hague not only to defend himself, but to defend our war for freedom," Ceku said. "We're convinced that truth and justice are on Ramush's side."

FULL story at link.

[tblue]

1. I'd been wondering what Al Pacino's been up to