Dead Diplomats Cannot Testify

Fact Check: No, Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke Are Not Testifying in The Hague.

Claiming Albright and Holbrooke will testify is journalistic malpractice. Both are dead; only their past words remain. Anything else is deception packaged as reporting.

A satirical take on misinformation: Albright and Holbrooke cannot testify at The Hague – they are dead, anything else is simply “FAKE NEWS.”

A Kosovo news outlet, Sinjali, published on 19 August 2025¹ that the “testimonies of Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke… will be used in favour of Hashim Thaçi in The Hague.” At face value, this claim suggests that two of Washington’s most prominent diplomats of the late 20th century are poised to step into the dock in defence of Kosovo’s former president. The problem is simple, and devastatingly obvious: both are dead.

Madeleine Albright, the first female US Secretary of State and one of the most recognisable champions of NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo, died in March 2022. Richard Holbrooke, architect of the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian war, died in December 2010. To …