Leader indicted

last updated 8 January 2015

Pristina, Kosovo

Kosovar Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj resigned this week after a United Nations tribunal indicted him for war crimes. Haradinaj, an ethnic Albanian, was a guerrilla leader in 1999, when Serbian paramilitaries tried to expel the Albanian population from Kosovo, then a province of Serbia. NATO bombing routed the Serbs, and the Albanian guerrillas retaliated, killing some Serbian civilians and driving some 200,000 others to flee. Haradinaj said the tribunal had unfairly singled him out to soothe lingering Serbian resentment. “I am entirely innocent,” he said. Kosovo is currently administered by the U.N., and negotiations for its formal independence from Serbia are to begin later this year.