Lawyer Gent Gjini has filed an appeal with the Special Prosecution Office against its decision to dismiss a criminal complaint against former Speaker of the Assembly, Dimal Basha, regarding his statements about the case of Astrit Dehari.
Gjini said the Special Prosecution unlawfully dismissed the criminal complaint, failing to treat the case objectively and fairly. According to him, the case relates to statements made by Basha, who at the time of his role as Speaker of the Assembly, during the last anniversary of Astrit Dehari’s death, said that the “Dehari case is worse than the crimes committed by the butcher of the Balkans, Slobodan Milosevic, against the Albanian people.”
“And therefore, representing one of the Albanian civilian victims in Prizren, where they faced a very serious criminal case in which the Milosevic regime killed two twin sons, we considered it appropriate to open and initiate a criminal offense for incitement of ethnic hatred against Dimal Basha. But this decision is scandalous because the prosecution, in its justification for dismissing the criminal complaint, argues that Dimal Basha did not commit incitement of ethnic hatred, but that it rather resembles an insult directed at war crimes, specifically Albanian civilian victims. The prosecution goes so far as to justify Dimal Basha’s actions without even questioning or hearing him. How could the Special Prosecution conclude such a thing, treating it as an insult and relativizing war crimes? In its reasoning, the prosecution itself states that Dimal Basha, through his actions and by comparing them with the crimes of the Serbian regime, is relativizing the war. Thus, it even admits that the feelings of the Albanian population have been affected,” Gjini said in front of the Special Prosecution Office, reported KosovaPress.
Furthermore, Gjini said that if his appeal is not accepted and the case is not reopened, he will also address the Court of Appeals, while also announcing protests over what he considers offensive language used by former Speaker Basha.
On the last anniversary of the death of former LVV activist Astrit Dehari, Dimal Basha, in his capacity as Speaker of the Assembly, stated that “we did not expect to suffer worse than what Albanians suffered under the fascist regime of Milosevic, and this happened in the case of Astrit Dehari.”
