The Geneva daily "Tamp" reported details from the life of Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, while he lived as a political asylum seeker in Switzerland and lobbied among the Albanian diaspora for financial resources for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
It is stated that KLA leaders and supporters were regularly in the city of Arau, "in apartments, cafes and the editorial office of a newspaper". The article adds that former refugees from Switzerland are also Albanian political activists Bardil Mahmuti, Hidejat Hiseni, Azem Sila, Adem Grabovci and Ramadan Avdiu.
"There were rumors that KLA leaders also collected money from heroin smuggling for the purchase of military weapons intended for Kosovo," the newspaper said.
"Tamp" reminded that as early as 1998, an investigation was launched in Switzerland against some Kosovo Albanians for arms smuggling, violation of territorial sovereignty abroad, hostility and participation in a criminal organization.
Hashim Thaci lived in Switzerland from 1994 to 1998, where he had the status of a political asylum seeker and studied political science and history at the University of Zurich for a year.
Professor and military strategy expert Albert Stahel remembers Thaci as a "very cautious" student.
"He attended my lecture on the mujahideen war in Afghanistan. He used their fighting mechanisms for his own war," said Stahel.
The paper assesses that Thaci left very few traces in Switzerland, where he was "discreet, untrustworthy and very careful about his secret political activities."
"Tachi regularly, five to six times a year, secretly went to Kosovo in order to establish connections with those responsible in the KLA, although as an asylum seeker he had no right to do so and could have been deprived of his status in Switzerland," the newspaper reported.
After finally leaving for Kosovo and under heavy suspicion, monitored by the intelligence services of several European countries, Thaci was accused of organizing the murders of his rivals as part of the Albanian independence movement, "Tamp" stated.
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