Lukic: Kosovo Assembly cannot challenge the jurisdiction of the court in The Hague, this is a farcical understanding of the rule of law

Lawyer Novak Lukic told Kosovo Online that the Special Chamber of the Constitutional Court of Kosovo had confirmed, even before the trial of former KLA leaders before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, the jurisdiction of the Specialist Chambers to rule on the criminal offenses covered by the indictment against them, and that no initiatives or decisions by the Kosovo Assembly can challenge that jurisdiction.

Lukic recalls that the defense of former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, during the pre-trial phase, submitted initiatives to the Constitutional Court of Kosovo challenging the jurisdiction of the Specialist Chamber, and all those petitions were rejected.

He added that he had not seen the initiative to amend the Law on the Specialist Chambers submitted by the Democratic Party of Kosovo, but said that, from a legal standpoint, he did not see how it could be used, nor how a decision by the Kosovo Assembly could challenge that jurisdiction.

“Thinking this way now, that in any domestic legal system, let alone in the international legal system, you can have a court issue a decision, then someone does not like that decision and therefore wants to abolish that court... That is a farcical way of thinking about the rule of law,” Lukic explained.

He pointed out that such an initiative could not affect the ongoing proceedings against Thaci and the other former KLA leaders, “if that was their idea”.

He stressed that such an initiative is primarily a political issue and that, if adopted by parliament, it should be subject to analysis by those who established the Specialist Chambers, namely the European Union.

“What the consequences would be is a matter of political assessment, but certainly for those who managed to reach an agreement with the Kosovo authorities. To abolish it now because someone is dissatisfied with the decision is absurd,” Lukic repeated.

Representatives of the Democratic Party of Kosovo on Monday submitted a Draft Law on Amendments to the Law on the Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor's Office. The draft law does not provide for the closure of the Specialist Chambers, but stipulates that they would deal with allegations concerning Dick Marty's report to the Council of Europe, while responsibility for other war crimes and offenses not directly related to those allegations would be assumed by Kosovo's judicial institutions.