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03 07 2007 Pristina _ No police will be charged following investigations into a violent protest on 10 February in Pristina, in which two died and over 80 were injured as protesters clashed with police.
Robert Dean, the international prosecutor in charge on the investigation, on Monday said there was insufficient evidence to charge specific officers with shooting at the protesters.
About 3,000 people took place in the protest, organised by Vetevendosje (Self-determination) movement.
A Balkan Insight investigation of 23 February blamed Romanian UN police for excessive use of force and improper use of rubber bullets, resulting in the deaths of two ethnic Albanian protesters, Mon Balaj and Arben Xheladini.
Click here to read the investigative report: http://birn.eu.com/en/71/10/2346/
The findings were confirmed by an interim report of 16 April drafted by the UN task group in charge for investigations headed by Robert Dean.
This report stated that “the evidence to date leads to the conclusion that deaths of Mon Balaj and Arben Xheladini were unnecessary and avoidable.”
“There is a reasonable suspicion that three of the shootings constitute crimes under Kosovo law,” Dean said on 17 April.
But Dean’s final report, made public on Monday, said there were substantive differences between Romanian law, international law and UN guidelines on the use of rubber bullets.
According to Dean, misunderstandings between the Romanian police and their commanders led to confusion about what action to take against the demonstrators.
“There appears to be some divergence between Romanian domestic law and generally accepted international law and guiding UN principles on the use of deadly force and very possibly on the use of rubber bullets,” Dean told reporters on Monday.
Dean also said that the coordinator of the police was not even aware that the Romanian special forces had used rubber bullets to disperse the protest.
At the beginning of 2010 BIRN network published Digging Deeper - A Guide for Investigative Journalists in the Balkans, written in cooperation with Sheila Coronel, Director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism and professor of professional practice at Columbia University, New York.
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