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| Mitchell Against witnessing against Hashim Thaçi in The Hague, December 5 , 2023 |
The KLA was aware that there were "evil elements" beyond their control, Mitchell stated in court, explaining that Thaçi was informed on several occasions when she was present at meetings. However, he claimed that the KLA uniform was also used by other individuals.
On Thursday, responding to Thaçi's lawyer, Gregory Kehoe, Mitchell confirmed statements from a report by the Verification Mission in Kosovo that individuals unrelated to the KLA would use its uniform for personal revenge and/or abduction.
Furthermore, the Yugoslav Army had continued to target individuals associated with the KLA or areas controlled by the KLA, attempting to cover up killings or blaming the KLA.
Mitchell also confirmed when asked by Kehoe that when "operations were conducted by Serbs and attributed to the other party, and the civilian population was armed, they paid these collaborators for information."
On Wednesday, Kehoe also referred to the "Panda Cafe" massacre, where six ethnic Serbs were killed in a cafe in Peć, which an OSCE report described as an act of retaliation by ethnic Albanians for the killing of dozens of KLA members.
Kehoe cited a BIRN article from December 2018, in which Serbia's former war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcević, said there were "almost no Albanians" in the Peć region at the time of the attack. "We concluded that Albanians are not the perpetrators," Vukcević had told BIRN. However, he added that the war crimes prosecutor did not investigate the case as it was outside its jurisdiction.
Mitchell, who had worked on writing the report, confirmed to Kehoe that if the information in the article is true, then the report's conclusion was inaccurate.
On Tuesday, during questioning by prosecutor Deborah Mayer, Mitchell had stated that "the involvement of the KLA in June was clear. Every report of mistreatment from June 19 to July 1 claimed that the perpetrators were from the KLA."
On Wednesday, she told the court that while in Kosovo "before NATO intervention and after," Kosovo Albanians who were friends or neighbors belonging to ethnic minority communities "were considered collaborators and were targeted by the KLA and their supporters at that time."
Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi, and Jakup Krasniqi are accused of individual and command responsibility for crimes committed against detainees held in KLA prisons in Kosovo and neighboring Albania, including 102 murders.