John Stewart Duncan, the third defense witness for former president Hashim Tha\u00e7i, said on Monday before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers that he had never seen Tha\u00e7i give orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Responding to questions from Tha\u00e7i\u2019s defense team on the first day of his testimony in The Hague, he said that Tha\u00e7i was viewed as a politician, not as a KLA commander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI never saw him give directives or orders. It was clear that we were dealing with two types of people. First, there was the military man or senior officer, and second, there was the politician. That was the impression I had.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He answered \u201cno\u201d when asked whether Tha\u00e7i was the supreme commander or commander-in-chief of the KLA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defense:<\/strong>\u00a0Do you think that in reality Hashim Tha\u00e7i was the commander-in-chief of the KLA? \u201cThe way they behaved with him [Tha\u00e7i] during negotiations was such that they treated him as the political wing, with a certain authority, but not as someone they had military respect for\u2014it was very obvious. They respected General \u00c7eku because he was a professional military officer, and they saw him as such. But when Hashim Tha\u00e7i arrived, there was a kind of tension, the typical tension that arises when a politician is present in discussions involving military officers. I think they saw Tha\u00e7i as an important politician for their cause but not as a military commander, and that was my impression based on how they behaved toward him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The former political adviser to General Wesley Clark stressed that in wartime, inflated titles are often given that do not reflect reality.\u201cIn my opinion, this was an inflated title. From my personal experience, I recall that in African revolutionary movements, where I grew up, guerrillas were given titles such as generals. Even in France, where I lived for several years, resistance leaders would say this is battalion X or Y, but in reality, it wasn\u2019t a battalion at all. There was a tendency to exaggerate titles. So, I didn\u2019t take it seriously and wasn\u2019t surprised at all. I don\u2019t know, maybe it comes from the American model where the president has the title of commander-in-chief. But in reality, the situation was different. In my view, it was an exaggeration, an inflation\u2014a grandiose title with a big name given to someone, but it didn\u2019t correspond to reality,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" John Stewart Duncan, the third defense witness for former president Hashim Tha\u00e7i, said on Monday before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers that he had never seen Tha\u00e7i give orders. Responding to questions from Tha\u00e7i\u2019s defense team on the first day of his testimony in The Hague, he said that Tha\u00e7i was viewed as a politician, not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":76970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[301,296],"tags":[5928,6702,2302],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76968"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76971,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76968\/revisions\/76971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Duncan:<\/strong>\u00a0No, because I have not seen any evidence, no proof of that.
Defense:<\/strong>\u00a0If he had been in such a position, what evidence would you have seen? Perhaps my question is: who is a person, what duties does a person have who is commander-in-chief?
Duncan:<\/strong>\u00a0The definitions have been given, but they are not definitions recognized or accepted by people like me. A commander-in-chief is mainly associated with command and control. Command is about the right to issue orders and directives, while control is the ability to exercise that command and to ensure that orders and directives are effectively carried out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n