Leading Kosovo guerrilla faces fresh war crimes charge

Kosovo's special prosecutor filed a war crimes indictment Friday against a top guerrilla commander turned politician who has twice before been charged and acquitted over atrocities in the 1990s conflict. The indictment says MP Fatmir Limaj was responsible for the killing of two civilians in November 1998 when the independence-seeking Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was fighting Serbian forces, the prosecutor's office announced. It added that Limaj "as a member of the KLA and commander of 121 Brigade, did not take reasonable and necessary measures within his power to prevent or halt" the killings in central Kosovo. He also "deliberately did not take measures to discover the perpetrators of this crime". With the nom de guerre "Steel", Limaj was one of the most prominent leaders of the ethnic Albanian KLA, which fought the forces of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic from 1998 to 1999. The war ended after a three-month NATO air campaign which ousted Milosevic's forces from Kosovo, paving the way for the southern province's unilateral declaration of independence a decade later. Limaj, 45, was charged in 2003 by a UN tribunal in The Hague over another war crimes case but acquitted two years later. In 2013, an EU-led court also acquitted him of abusing Serb and Albanian civilians and Serb prisoners during the conflict. In a statement Friday he denied the fresh indictment, saying it marked the "continuation of his persecution". Limaj served as a transport minister after the war and was one of the founders of what is now Kosovo's largest political party, the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK). The politician has also been charged with corruption and organised crime during his ministerial post.