How Media Fakery Is Targeting Kosovo’s Specialist Chambers

Stolen journalism, fabricated witnesses, and Russian-backed narratives: How a coordinated disinformation machine is working to derail war crimes prosecutions at Kosovo’s Hague-based court.

In the bitter struggle to safeguard Kosovo’s nascent justice institutions, a new front has emerged: the weaponisation of media fakery. At the heart of this emerging operation is a relatively obscure but increasingly toxic figure — a man whose name might barely register outside social media circles, yet whose activities reflect a broader, calculated effort to distort reality and weaken accountability for war crimes in Kosovo. His name is Fitim Çeku.

Mr Çeku presents himself as a journalist, a bearer of supposed ‘exclusives’ on social platforms, but closer scrutiny reveals an alarming portrait of manipulation, falsehood, and theft. His latest act, a brazen attempt to pass off original investigative findings¹ by The Gunpowder Chronicles as his own, marks a new low in this ongoing information war.

On 29 May 2025, Mr Çeku posted a supposed “exclusive” to his Facebook page², featuring images of a clandestine 2020 meeting in Zurich between the disgraced operative Halit Sahitaj and Russian oliga…