Kosovo - July 2023

The former head of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency (KIA), Driton Gashi, has been sentenced by the Pristina Basic Court to almost five years in prison after being found guilty of abuse of office. In 2018 he was involved in illegally deporting six Turkish nationals living in Kosovo to Türkiye, after the Turkish government accused them of being followers of Fethullah Gülen, who the Turkish authorities accuse of sponsoring terrorism. This is part of a larger transnational repression campaign by the Turkish authorities, which, as reported by Freedom House, took place in at least 31 other countries. The six deportees are serving hefty prison sentences in Türkiye with minimal or no contact with their families. A 2019 Kosovo parliamentary commission found that 31 laws and procedures were breached and that former president Hashim Thaçi, now on trial in the Hague for unrelated crimes, ordered the incident. The then Prime Minister, Ramush Haradinaj, claimed he had no knowledge of the operation. Human Rights Watch has condemned the deportations as a “serious disregard of human rights and the rule of law”. Nonetheless, Gashi has announced that he will appeal the charges.

Sources: Balkan Insight, Koha, Reuters, Freedom House