According to Kosovo’s Specialised Chambers Press communiqué, the indictment was issued on October 23rd 2026. In his request, Shala had filed several claims of individual rights violations during the criminal process against him.
One of the cases raised by Shala concerned the past time between crimes presented in his indictment and trial. He claimed this period had violated the justice of the process. The Chamber, however, estimated that he had benefited from a controversial judicial process and that the procedures, in all, had been fair and unapprarian. Parts of the complaint were declared unacceptable because of the failure to cut legal means.
Shala also rejected the acceptance and use in judging statements issued earlier before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Belgium’s Federal Judicial Police, when he was questioned as suspected without legal representatives.
On this issue, the Chamber found that Shala had been given numerous opportunities to reject their statements and use, while objections were addressed by criminal panels. According to the communiqué, one of the statements was not used in the trial, while others had not been crucial to his conviction. Even at this point, some claims were declared unacceptable due to the failure of legal means.
Another claim involved the principle of legitimacy. Shala had argued that the joint criminal enterprise, as a form of criminal responsibility, and the war crime of arbitrary ban on an international armed conflict had not been defined sufficiently clearly or were not predictable at the time when acts were allegedly committed.
The Constitutional Court Chamber estimated that the basic form of the joint criminal enterprise was recognised by international custom rights at the right time, and that even the arbitrary ban had sufficient clear grounds in this right. She found that relevant legal sources were available long before the crime committed and that criminal responsibility on these grounds was predictable for Shala. As a result, he did not find a violation of the principle of legitimacy.
In his request, Shala had also rejected the level of specification of the charges, claiming that no members of the joint criminal enterprise had been sufficiently identified, nor the number of victims’ identity. According to him, it had violated the right to be effectively announced on charges and to prepare defence.
The Chamber estimated that the charges contained enough information to enable Shala to understand claims against him and prepare defence. She stressed that he had been notified of the involvement of other members of the joint criminal enterprise, beyond those identified by name, and that he had received further details about the victims long before the trial began.
In the final part of the request, Shala objected to implementing the escalation of sentences under Law No. 05L-053 for Specialised Chambers and Specialised Prosecutor’s Office, instead of other laws in effect in Kosovo at the appropriate time. He also claimed the pronounced sentence was unproportional and violated the principle of equality before the law, compared to sentences in similar cases.
Regarding the claim of inequality and excessive condemnation, the Chamber declared the complaint unacceptable because of its failure to cut legal means. While implementing the Law on Punishments, she recalled that specialised rooms operate within Kosovo’s justice system and that the applicable law on penalties is Law No. 05 L-053. Under this law, criminal panels are not obliged to implement other Kosovo laws for the appointment of sentences for international crimes, but must take them into account.
In the conclusion, the Specialised Chamber of the Constitutional Court did not state constitutional violations regarding claims it considered on the ground, while other parts of the request declared it unacceptable, largely due to the failure of legal means.
Source Layer: RTKLive