Bekim Blakaj from the Fund for Humanitarian Law has expressed uncertainty about the mandate and competencies of the task of drafting the strategy for supporting the defendants’ defence teams in Kosovo’s Specialised Chambers in The Hague.
In a statement on the show Info Magazine in Klan Kosova, Blakaj has said it is still not known what concrete competencies this group will have and how it can affect judicial processes.
He has estimated that one of the main problems facing defence teams has been the lack of sufficient financial means, which, according to him, has also affected the continuation of their composition.
We still don’t know what the exact mandate of this strategy-making group is. Normally, defenders of the accused’s teams are in front of the court and are the ones to submit arguments to the second degree. I don’t know how this group will help. The defensive teams need financial support and I don’t know if what they had so far was enough, Blakaj has declared.
He has recalled that during judicial procedures there have been cases when lawyers have been withdrawn from defence teams and replaced, praising that these changes have negatively affected the defense of the accused.
Some lawyers were withdrawn and changed during the procedure. I think that with those defenders gone, they have weakened their defenses. The main problem was lack of sufficient financial means. I don’t know whether this working group that has met has such competencies or whether it might influence the defence teams to better co-ordinate each other, Blakaj stressed.