The former prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal, Jeffrey Nice, said that the great responsibility for the release of Haradinaj, Gotovina and Markac lies with the former prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, writes "Dnevni avaz".
Namely, in an interview with a Sarajevo daily, he said that the entire proceeding against the former KLA commander "is an embarrassment for the entire Office of the Prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal", but not because they were acquitted, but because the entire proceeding was initiated improperly.
According to him, qualified lawyers suggested to the then chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte that there was not enough evidence for the proceedings before the Hague Tribunal against Haradinaj and his comrades.
"After that, Carla del Ponte 'instructed' three lawyers who have no experience as lawyers in the courtroom and who, after the indictment was filed, would not represent the case in court anyway on behalf of the Prosecutor's Office," Nice points out and adds that those lawyers later wrote the indictment, after which their responsibility ended, because other people in the courtroom represented the indictment.
According to him, qualified lawyers suggested to the then chief prosecutor that there was not enough evidence for the case even before starting the proceedings against Haradinaj and his comrades.
Nice adds that, apart from the lawyers, there were open warnings to Carla del Ponte in the Tribunal regarding the shortcomings of the prosecution.
"An experienced lawyer and I wrote to Del Ponte just a few months before the indictment was filed, warning her that she could not file an indictment without the consensus of the bar, which is a kind of test for the viability of an indictment based on the amount and strength of the evidence.
This was, by the way, a common practice among Prosecutor's Office lawyers during the tenure of Louise Arbor, Del Ponte's predecessor," said Nice.
"We explained to her that testing the indictment was necessary to allow the most experienced lawyers to give their comments. But Del Ponte refused," he added.
Now, as he says, it is too late to correct all the irregularities that resulted from the eight-year mandate of Carla del Ponte.
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