Tag: Kosovo

The findings of this investigation show how the experts of the Cadaster in the municipality of Malisheva were threatened. Also, the court’s verdicts hurt cadaster’s officials because they did not want to do their job under threat.

The widow Rabishe Mazreku said that she cannot possess the property her dead husband left her even though there is a verdict from the court giving her this right.
This property is usurped by the bother of her husband Bajram Mazreku. Even 7 years after the court verdict was released, she still cannot gain possession of the land.

Bajram Mazreku was contacted by “Justice in Kosovo” but did not want to comment on the case. Haxhi Millaku, Bajram Mazreku’s lawyer said that his client was threatened by Rabishe Mazreku’s family, which she denies.

On the other side, Fadil Shala head of cadastre of Malisheva said their officials were threatened by Bajram Rexhepi when the court verdict was being executed.

On the second part of the program, there was reportage about municipality properties in Malisheva that are disputable.

Qamil Mazreku from Malisheva cannot be compensated for the property that the municipality of Malisheva took from his father Qazim Mazreku.

It seems that they gave a controversial property to Mazreku’s family because citizens from the Carrakulla village pretended to own the land.

Ahmet Hoti from Carrakulla village said that this property belongs to his family as it was bought many years ago by his father.Ragib Begaj Mayor of Malisheva said that he has no explanation for this case and said to contact the municipality’s lawyers.

The lawyer did not want to comment while the camera was rolling and answered with a letter, explaining that the land was given as compensation to the Mazreku family, and that the is property belongs to the municipality. According to him, Hoti’s family has no ownership of this property.

The Hoti family sued the municipality and the Basic Court of Malisheva decided in their favor.But now the case is on the Court of Appeal to take a verdict on this property.

The verdict on whether the President violated the Constitution in order to extend the mandate to the international judges of the Constitutional Court of Kosovo will be taken in 2016.

Experts and lawyers interviewed by “Justice in Kosovo” said that the Ombudsperson request filed by Constitutional Court to clear up if the President violated Constitution can only be decided in 2016.Currently, 7 lawyers are working on the Constitutional Court, three of them are newly appointed.

According the former judge of the Constitutional Court Gjuleta Mushkolaj the three international judges cannot judge this case because this creates conflict of interest.

“The three decreed lawyers cannot judge this case, it presents conflict of interest, while to judge this case 7 lawyers are needed” said Mushkolaj.

The Ombudsperson filed a request by the Constitutional Court asking to evaluate if the President decree is constitutional.
Sami Kurteshi, Ombudsperson on an interview for “Justice in Kosovo” explained the reasons why he thinks this decision is unconstitutional.

“The decree is not based on the Constitution of Kosovo and this makes it unconstitutional” stated Kurteshi.He listed the cases that he found contradicted the President decree.

The officials of the President office did not comment on the case. They did not even agree to comment on the memo compiled by EULEX officials, which was broadcasted during the “Life in Kosovo” TV program, which showed how the EULEX officers persuaded the President to release this decree.

Even the head of the Constitutional Court, Enver Hasani did not comment on this document, even though on this memo states that EULEX officials consulted him before the decree was released.
According to Mushkolaj:“None of the judges of the Constitutional Court is permitted to give advice”.

The ex-wife complained to “Justice in Kosovo” because her husband was not allowing her to see her child. When he was contacted by “Justice in Kosovo”, he stated that his wife had an affair with the neighbor, and that he has evidence.

He said that through his connections he managed to get his wife’s phone records “I made a request to the head of Prosecution but they told me I couldn’t get this information, later through a lawyer from Peja I managed to get a part of them” he said.
She does not admit to sending these messages and claims that her husband invented the story in order to gain full custody of their son.

The head of the Prosecution of Gjakova, Shpresa Bakija said that she refused to give the messages to the parties. She also denied to have given the messages to the husband’s lawyer.

“I told them according to the law I can’t give you those messages if the case goes to the court, and this one makes a request to have the messages I will give them” Bakija said.

Bakija said that she cannot explain how the messages leaked from her office, if this was done by the lawyer she is still not aware and does not know how they got a hold of them.

The Prosecution will now follow the case and find out whom and how the messages were leaked since they are considered confidential information from the office of the Prosecution.

An investigation made by “Justice in Kosovo” showed reports of state authorities that emphasized that citizen of Vushtri can be at risk of a gas and ammoniac explosion.

The investigation also shows that the public security institutions have not taken any precautions to avoid the risk.The problem with the ammoniac in the Llamkos depots started in last June when KEDS cut the electricity to Llamkos factory.

The electricity in this factory above all the functions on the production line is needed to keep to control the ammoniac tanks.In case the ammoniac canisters explode, the experts have calculated that inhabitants living 5 up to 7 kilometers near Llamkos factory are threatened.

The risk for explosion and technical failures is also ascertained by the inspectors of the Emergency Management Agency.

The officials of the Emergency Department in Vushtri warned that there was a serious risk and also explained how all the institutions are aware of this risk and no precautions have been taken. According to them, no one is in charge of the depots and if someone enters it is a dangerous situation.

The inhabitants told “Justice in Kosovo” that they are scared. They say that they see firefighters cooling the canisters, which according to chief of the firefighters, if exposed to the sun is at risk of exploding.

Officials from Llamkos denied the possibility of any explosion. They even said that their tanks are almost empty and are safe.
According to them, the reservoirs have security valve are supervised by a security company.

 

The investigation which analyzed the results of the exams done by the Police of Kosovo showed that the police officers who didn’t even pass the test, only for the fact that they came from minority groups got promoted.

The explanation given by the police of Kosovo was that the promotion of the 5 police officers was purposely done to increase the number of supervisors that come from minority communities.

The Minister of Internal affairs Bajram Rexhepi didn’t comment on this case, saying he has not dealt with this process.
“The criteria of evaluating the officials of the Kosovo Police should be the same for all” said the deputy Nuredin Ibishi.

“As far as I know there is no other country that follows this practice, including countries that are compound of different minority groups like Kosovo”, he added.

On the second part of the program “Justice in Kosovo” was broadcasted the investigation regarding the causes of the death of the 21 year old Edon Petershani, who died after a fatal incident on the factory where he was working.

After 8 years his parents do not agree with the decision of the court, and when they went to ask for the death certificate they found out that their son’s case was closed.

The judge of the case Ilmi Hoxha didn’t want to comment; he said that it was closed after 6 years.

The prosecutor who prepared this subject and did all the investigations said that he agreed with the sentence and he didn’t claim.
The family of the victim claims that the judgment process was not fair and there were a lot of irregularities during the process of preparing the investigation file.

Cases of criminal offense on public property were reported during the TV program “Justice in Kosovo”. There were 15 cases of former lawyers of the Court of Pristina who gave illegal verdicts in cases of privatizing public property. The total estimated damage was around 60 million euro.

All those cases were managed by Judge Nuhi Uka in the Basic Court in Pristina. He distributed the 15 indictments to different lawyers and all of them broke the chronological schedule in the court.

All the accused people in this process were sentenced with conditioned jail starting from six months to up to 2 years.

Previous cases in the juridical system showed evidences that other members of the juridical system have been sentenced up to six years in prison for the same type of criminal offense.

“This judgment was not fair, this sentence policies, create space for misuses within the juridical system” said Armend Zenelaj Court Monitor from BIRN

“The investigation should have last to prove who really benefited and how much money got each of them” he added.

The prosecutor of the case said he was fine with the sentence but he did not agree to the scale of the sentence.

Citizens are illegally cutting the woods and no one is preventing this. “Justice in Kosovo” interviewed the minister of defense regarding this matter

“This is a repeating of such incidents in the same area” said Bajram RexhepiHe said that they had information that the wood cutters were cutting woods in Serbia border.

First the villagers were scared to talk they didn’t want to talk publicly.The reason why they go illegally to Serbia is because they have like more woods than the Kosovo part.

The minister of Defense says he is informed of this activity, and if the two police did not collaborate it would be hard to stop this.

A Serbian from Metergovc admitted to the camera that he has seen people cutting woods and they have no problem from the border police two pass the border more than 2 km without being stopped by the police.

After reporting the incident of wood cutting the crew of “Justice in Kosovo” visited the same area again and they noticed that the situation didn’t change at all and there are people who continue this activity.

Faik Kadriu from municipality of Podujeva said that it’s not under their responsibility to follow this citizen; the Serbian authorities should take responsibilities because the illegal activity is done in their territory.

After having broadcasted several programs that showed the conditions of judicial in the main municipalities in Kosovo, “Justice in Kosovo” discussed with the head of the Judicial Council Enver Peci.

Regarding the insufficient number of judges Peci said that this came as a result of the reform in the judicial system. Judges that were not properly qualified were fired by their positions.

On the other hand the number of cases has increased and a lot of them are inherited by the past, this has brought to the situation that the actual judges cannot manage to treat all the cases.Peci added that it takes time to prepare professional judges,

Another problem faced is, bad conditions of working environments, and spaces. According to Peci this conditions will not change if the budget will not increase.
He also said that they made a request for budget increasing but it was not approved by the members of the parliament.

Peci said that on the hearing session for budget planning in the parliament all the deputies of the parliament agreed that the budget for the Judicial should increase and he is surprised how they didn’t vote for this.

Peci also declared that the conditions of the Council buildings are worse than the buildings of many courts all over Kosovo.
The only hope for better environments is the Palace of Justice. We are waiting to be transferred in the new building as soon as the Palace of Justice where the conditions will be better.

Another problem discussed was the Appeal Court missing 6 judges. Peci according this problem said that they have finished the interview with potential judges and till the end of August they will start to work by the Court of Appeal.

The court of Appeal is also missing a web page, according this Peci said that the web page is getting finalized and will be ready to use in short time.
The problem of the web page is present also in other courts in Kosovo, but what is more concerning is missing of judges.

The basic Court of Pristine needs 22 more judges to work in normal conditions, regarding this Peci said that he is aware but he repeated that it is impossible to have this number of professional judges nowadays.

 

The Prishtina Court covers the largest area of all the courts and according to Hamdi Ibrahimi head of the basic court in Pristina, the number of judges in this court is only the half of what it should be.

“A judge is in charge of 1600 cases, this shows clearly how difficult is the situation” he added.
He explained that most of the time they are treating old cases and do not have time for the new ones.

“If we close the doors of the court today it will take five years to finish old cases” said Ibrahimi.
Another concerning thing in the basic court of Pristine is also the absence of prosecutors in the court to present their cases.

This was confirmed also by the head of the prosecution of Pristine Imer Beka who said that the number of prosecutors they have is insufficient to follow all the cases.

“At the moment we have 27 prosecutors and based on the volume of the cases we need 68 this makes the prosecutors incapable to follow all the cases” said Beka.

Another problem inside the judicial system in Pristina is the absence of professional collaborators.

The head of the court said that they don’t have enough professional collaborators and the existing technical staff is not qualified enough.

Same situation is in the prosecution of Pristine the number of professional collaborators is not enough to maintain a normal level of performance.

The main cases that should be treated in the court of Pristine should be those related to corruption according Ibrahimi, but according to him the prosecution doesn’t present many of them.

The head of the prosecution Imer Beka said that corruption cases are priority but the big volume of work prevents the prosecutors from following them.

Both Prosecution and Court of Pristine are facing the lack of adequate working places. The Court activity is divided in different buildings in Pristine they are looking forward to be transferred at the Palace of Justice.

After 18 months of starting its activity also the Court of Appeal in Pristine is facing a lot of problems.

Sali Meka the head of this court said that even though the number of judges has been reduced they have made a big progress in reducing the number of old cases.