First EULEX verdict: Ex-KLA member gets 17 years
International judges sentenced a former Kosovo Albanian guerrilla fighter to 17 years in prison for shooting a family in 1998, in the first such trial since the EU administrative mission started in December, a statement said Wednesday.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Thursday, March 05, 2009
The panel of two international and one local judge found Gani Gashi, 59, who fought in the Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla during the 1998-99 conflict, guilty of war crimes, the statement said.
"Four members of the Kosovo Albanian Obrija family were shot by Gashi," it added. "One person died and the other three were injured." Gashi opened fire on the family when the car they were travelling in failed to stop at a KLA checkpoint he was manning.
The verdict came a day after Serb judges and prosecutors in the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica blocked EU judges from trying two Serbs suspected of robbery. The blockade highlighted the difficulties the union's largest-ever police-and-justice mission faces in functioning in Serb-dominated areas. The trial has since resumed, after two days of protests.
