Dixon rejects the Prosecution’s claims of a joint criminal enterprise and allegations against Veseli
At the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, during the presentation of the closing statement, Kadri Veseli’s lawyer, Rodney Dixon, said that the Special Prosecutor’s Office has no evidence of a “joint criminal enterprise” and no grounds for its allegations against his client.
He called it absurd that the Prosecution relied as evidence on an interview Veseli gave in 2011, which, according to him, was distorted.
“The SPO has no evidence to support the ‘joint criminal enterprise’ they claim against my client. And in paragraph four of the case file, they include a surprising statement, citing what my client said in an interview on 9 February 2011. It was used as evidence that the General Staff acted collectively. I remind the court that they quoted something my client said in an interview many, many years after the war. The interview in the media was not under oath; he did not say there were no separate responsibilities, but that we did what we could — we were engaged in leadership, logistics, intelligence, counterintelligence, because those were the circumstances. The SPO then takes parts of this interview, but if they had listened to the entire interview, they would have understood that Veseli was talking about the early phases of the conflict. He continues and says that in May 1998, after discussions with Agim Çeku, we started establishing the KLA structures and made them more professional. It is absurd. You need to be careful when giving weight to media interviews from 2009, which took place after the war. Veseli was becoming politically known and was answering general questions recorded or taken by journalists. There is no evidence; this is a conspiracy theory. The SPO is increasingly collapsing and reaching its end when it tries to show these as proof that Veseli contributed to a ‘joint criminal enterprise,’” he said.
Dixon also rejected the Prosecution’s claim that the Kosovo Intelligence Service (SHIK) was operational from April 1999.
“They also mention a documentary covering Veseli’s visit to The Hague in 2019 for the Specialist Chambers interview, but the collaborators are not mentioned at all. I say, since it is a public appearance showing that he came to The Hague, but to claim that this proves Veseli ran the entire apparatus to identify collaborators during the war is absurd. The SPO has tried to tell us that SHIK was operational from April 1999 and that Veseli was its head. They also claim that because of UNMIK, the provisional government was not allowed to do anything. Everything they say is based on Veseli’s interviews, which do not show what specifically happened in April, May, June, July, and August 1999. The SPO has brought no evidence to prove that SHIK was operational during that time,” he said.
