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UÇKHistory and Memory
Life: 1968 –

Analytical profile · KLA members · Commanders · Political leaders · Defendants in court proceedings

Ramush Haradinaj

Ramush Haradinaj was a KLA commander in the Dukagjin region during the war. After the war he entered politics and twice served as prime minister of Kosovo. In 2005 he resigned after the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted him. The trial chamber acquitted him in 2008; after the Appeals Chamber ordered a partial retrial in 2010, he was acquitted again in 2012.

Editorial status: Awaiting verificationDrafted from the cited sources; not yet fully reviewed by the editors.

Living person — personal information is deliberately limited.

Source basis

Public ICTY judgments and academic monographs; public roles only.

In the literature on the KLA, Haradinaj is described as one of the best-known regional commanders in western Kosovo, where fighting with Serbian and Yugoslav forces intensified during 1998 [1] [2].

In the Haradinaj et al. case before the ICTY, he was acquitted of all charges in the first-instance judgment (2008) and on retrial (2012) [3]. The retrial was ordered after the Appeals Chamber found that the trial chamber had not taken sufficient steps to secure the testimony of certain witnesses.

An acquittal is not a ruling on every event of the period, and the charges brought were not a verdict on the KLA as a whole. The archive presents the decisions with their procedural precision.

Sources

  1. [1]James Pettifer. The Kosova Liberation Army: Underground War to Balkan Insurgency, 1948–2001. Hurst Publishers, Londër, 2014-01. https://hurstpublishers.com/book/the-kosova-liberation-army-2/. Accessed 2026-09-16.
  2. [2]Tim Judah. Kosovo: War and Revenge. Yale University Press, 2000. https://books.google.com/books/about/Kosovo.html?id=TDmwQgAACAAJ. Accessed 2026-09-16.
  3. [3]Tribunali Penal Ndërkombëtar për ish-Jugosllavinë (ICTY). Prosecutor v. Haradinaj et al. (IT-04-84 dhe IT-04-84bis) — faqja e çështjes. IT-04-84. https://www.icty.org/en/case/haradinaj. Accessed 2026-09-16.

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