Antonijevic: Serbia should present numerous pieces of evidence to the Hague court to establish concrete responsibility

Lawyer Milan Antonijevic stated that anyone with a sense of humanity should want all evidence to be presented before the Hague court that determines responsibility, primarily of the KLA, for crimes against both Serbs and Albanians.

Commenting on negative reactions from Pristina to the news that the Trial Panel in The Hague had accepted as evidence documents submitted by the Serbian authorities, Antonijevic told Kosovo Online that he hopes these critical voices will be “nothing more than a small noise that was heard” and that, in the long run, there will be no greater resistance to using the documents Serbia possesses, which prove the crimes.

“There was also a lot of forensic data. Our forensic experts were in Kosovo during these crimes and carried out crime scene investigations. There is also much other information that Serbia possesses, obtained in a legal and valid manner, which should be presented to this Hague-based court so that we can achieve reconciliation, but above all, establish the responsibility of specific individuals and members of the KLA,” Antonijevic said.

Given that Pristina is at the same time demanding that Serbian archives be opened to shed light on the fate of missing persons, Antonijevic noted that “double messages” are often heard.

“Of course, the archives that Serbia holds, considering that Belgrade was the center of the former state, are much more organized and more accurately reflect the real situation than archives created only in the 1990s in the former republics and in Kosovo. The trust in those archives and the desire to access those documents on the one hand, and the distrust in the same archives and the wish that these documents not appear before the court on the other hand, speak to the unseriousness and immaturity of politicians, and to how much more time must pass before everyone realizes that responsibility for crimes is something that must be established,” he concluded.