English - Eulex

The cases involved defendants from different ethnic groups, and a variety of criminal acts and related
criminal charges. All cases were initially taken over by a EULEX prosecutor who eventually made a request
for assigning a EULEX judge to the case. However, as envisaged in the Law on Jurisdiction, a request to take
over a case can also be made by the president of the competent court. One such example is given below
regarding a case which was assigned to the EULEX judges in Pristina DC.
Pristina DC
The request to take over the criminal case of Agron Haradinaj et alia pending in Pristina DC was made by
the President of this district court. The defendants in the case were charged with the criminal offence of
attempted aggravated murder.
In his written statement, the President of Pristina DC supported the request of the presiding (in this case)
Kosovo judge for the handover of the case to the competence of EULEX judges due to threats he had
received from the defendant. There were as well letters from the defence counsel calling for the main trial
to be scheduled as soon as possible.
Assessment of the compliance of the request with the requirements of Article 3 of the Law on Jurisdiction:
It was found that in this case there was a need to “ensure the proper administration of justice” 18 , determined
by the following factors: the case had been prolonged for some time at the main trial stage, there was
therefore a need to re-open the main hearing; the presiding Kosovo judge had received serious threats from
the defendant; the defendants were former KLA members, which made the case politically sensitive; the
defendants had been in pre-trial detention for more than two years. Based on these multiple grounds the
President of the Assembly of the EULEX Judges decided that in order to ensure the proper administration
of justice the case would be handed over to EULEX judges. Section 3 of this Chapter contains the summary
of the criminal proceedings before the EULEX judges.
All of the cases in Mitrovicë/a DC and the case in Pristina DC, for which requests for take over were made,
were assigned to EULEX judges. However, in some of the cases, there were not sufficient grounds for the
assignment of EULEX judges under the Law on Jurisdiction and the requests were therefore rejected. An
example of such a case is given below.
d) Requests to take over civil cases – specific statistics and analysis
Of the 34 civil case related requests two were at the execution stage. Eleven of the 34 requests were made
by the EULEX civil judge; 2 - by defence counsels of the claimants; 12 requests were made by the claimants;
2 by the respondents and 7 requests were made either by the presiding judge or by the president of the
respective court.
The highest number of requests - 25 - came from Pejë/Peć region:
18 Art. 3.3 in conjunction with Art 3.5, Law on Jurisdiction
33