Nasim Haradinaj’s statement1 on Thursday should not be softened by euphemism, excused as veteran rhetoric or treated as another combustible performance from Kosovo’s political margins. A convicted criminal who has already served a prison sentence for intimidating people connected to criminal proceedings went on television and told citizens that if they celebrated a conviction in the Hashim Thaçi case, they would “burn”. He did not utter those words in an accidental exchange. He was asked what he meant and was given an opportunity to withdraw them. Instead, he elaborated. He said Kosovo would “catch fire”, that the crisis would spread across Albanian communities beyond Kosovo, and that people who intended to celebrate a guilty verdict “must know that they will burn, they will not celebrate”. This was not political analysis. It was an attempt to terrorise civilians out of exercising one of the most elementary liberties of a democratic society, the right to express relief, satisfaction or even celebration when a court delivers justice.
There is a grotesque cruelty in the target Haradinaj selected. The people he is warning are not an invading army. They are not armed combatants. They may include the sons and daughters of murdered men, the widows of assassinated political activists, the relatives of people who disappeared, former colleagues of murdered journalists, members of families who have waited for more than a quarter of a century for someone to answer for what happened to their loved ones. Some may believe that a conviction of one or more of the defendants in The Hague would finally recognise crimes that Kosovo’s institutions either failed or were unable to resolve. Haradinaj’s answer to those people is not that he disagrees with them. His answer is that if they celebrate, they will burn.
No democracy worthy of the name can shrug at that sentence. A person’s freedom does not stop at the point where Nasim Haradinaj becomes angry. A bereaved family does not require the permission of a veterans’ association to welcome a criminal judgment. A widow does not have to hide indoors because a convicted intimidator disapproves of her relief. A citizen does not surrender the right to assemble, speak, mourn or celebrate because a political faction has decided that one possible verdict is sacred and another is intolerable. Haradinaj’s words are an attempt to impose political obedience through fear. Their intended effect is obvious. Anyone contemplating celebrating a conviction is now invited to contemplate violence against themselves first.
The fact that Haradinaj has already been convicted of intimidation makes this far more serious than the ravings of an irresponsible television guest. The Kosovo Specialist Chambers convicted Nasim Haradinaj, together with Hysni Gucati, of offences including intimidation during criminal proceedings and violations involving confidential material and protected information. His final sentence was four years and three months. The underlying case concerned the disclosure of confidential prosecution material and conduct affecting potential witnesses. The importance of that history cannot be overstated. This is a man who has already stood before judges and been punished for conduct directed against the integrity of criminal justice. He now reappears in public, shortly before one of the most consequential judgments in Kosovo’s recent history, and once again places fear around the judicial process.
That is why the authorities should not wait for blood before treating this seriously. Haradinaj’s remarks should be immediately referred to Kosovo’s prosecutors and police for assessment as a possible criminal threat, intimidation and incitement to violence. If the applicable criminal elements are established, he should be prosecuted and he should go back to prison. Society should not have to produce a corpse before the state discovers that threatening citizens with being burned for celebrating a court judgment is unacceptable. The purpose of criminal law is not merely to count bodies afterwards. It is also to protect people from credible intimidation, coercion and threats of violence before those threats are carried out.
Haradinaj should not receive a special exemption because he once fought in the Kosovo Liberation Army. Military service is not diplomatic immunity from the criminal law. Being a veteran does not place a man above the liberties of other veterans, civilians, journalists, political opponents or victims’ families. Kosovo did not fight Serbia in order to replace one system of political fear with another in which former commanders and their associates decide who may speak, who may mourn and who may celebrate. If anything, those who claim the mantle of the liberation struggle should be held to a higher standard, because they continually invoke that struggle as the moral foundation of the state they now inhabit.
The prosecution’s final trial brief2 in the Thaçi, Veseli, Selimi and Krasniqi proceedings makes the context particularly disturbing. It is important to state what that document is. It is the Specialist Prosecutor’s case, not the judgment of the Trial Panel, and the four accused remain presumed innocent unless and until convicted. But the prosecution alleges that political and other perceived opponents were abducted, arbitrarily detained, tortured, disappeared and killed. It says public statements and communiques were used to threaten opponents and to turn punishment into a warning for others. It also says that witnesses came before the court despite a climate of intimidation. The prosecution further alleges that the alleged common purpose included intimidating, mistreating, committing violence against and removing people regarded as opponents, with crimes including persecution, unlawful detention, cruel treatment, torture, enforced disappearance and murder.
The human consequences described by the prosecution are equally relevant to Haradinaj’s intervention now. The brief says the alleged crimes affected not only direct victims but their families and communities, including journalists, intellectuals and moderate political and community leaders. It alleges that the effect of violence was amplified through aggressive public statements and that some victims’ bodies were deliberately left in visible locations to “send a message”. It goes on to describe a “longstanding and pervasive climate of witness intimidation”, saying that some witnesses were reluctant to testify because they feared for their own safety and that of their families, that some expressly indicated fear and that several referred to attempts to interfere with their evidence. This is precisely why Haradinaj’s latest words cannot be treated as folkloric bravado. They land in a society in which fear surrounding testimony, political murders and accountability has been documented for years.
There is something especially repellent about using the language of collective catastrophe to frighten individual families. Haradinaj speaks of Kosovo catching fire, Albania catching fire and Albanian lands catching fire, as though an entire nation must burn unless Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi walk out of The Hague as free men. In his formulation, acquittal becomes the only permissible outcome, while conviction becomes a licence for chaos and those who welcome justice become legitimate targets of that chaos. It does not. Kosovo will remain Kosovo if any of the defendants are acquitted. Kosovo will remain Kosovo if any of them are convicted. The KLA’s war against Serbian repression will not be invalidated by the conviction of an individual. NATO’s intervention will not cease to have happened. The massacres committed by Serbian forces will not disappear. Kosovo’s independence will not be annulled. The attempt to fuse four criminal defendants with the nation itself is political blackmail designed to make accountability appear synonymous with treason.
It also serves another purpose. By declaring that “all Albanian lands” will burn, Haradinaj attempts to manufacture the impression that violence would be an inevitable social reaction rather than a criminal choice made by individuals. That is an old and dangerous manoeuvre. Political extremists frequently speak of impending violence as if they are merely weather forecasters. They announce what “will happen”, strip themselves of agency and then wait for frightened institutions to modify their behaviour. But violence is not rain. Buildings do not spontaneously burn because judges sign a verdict. Human beings set them alight. People are assaulted because other people decide to assault them. When a prominent political activist says that those who celebrate “will burn”, the state is entitled to ask whether he is predicting violence, encouraging it, threatening it or signalling to others that it would be justified.
The answer becomes still more urgent because Haradinaj knows exactly what witness intimidation means. He cannot plausibly claim to be unfamiliar with the damage caused when fear is introduced into judicial proceedings. He was convicted in a case centred on precisely that danger. Yet here he is again, helping create the atmosphere in which citizens must consider whether exercising their freedom after a verdict could make them targets. A man with that record should understand better than most that intimidation does not require a gun pressed against someone’s temple. It can begin with the public creation of fear, with identifying a category of people as legitimate objects of punishment and with making them wonder whether the state can protect them.
The financial history surrounding Haradinaj also deserves renewed scrutiny, not because wealth proves criminality, because it does not, but because the public record raises obvious questions about how political power, postwar privilege and privatisation operated in Kosovo. Reporting based on his declarations to Kosovo’s Anti Corruption Agency placed his declared assets in the millions of euros, largely through land acquired in privatisation. A 2018 report citing his 2017 declaration put his assets at approximately 4.51 million euros, including about 4.4 million euros in privatised land and another 90,000 euros in inherited property, while reporting declared annual municipal employment income below 7,900 euros. Later reporting referred to approximately 220 hectares acquired through privatisation and declared at a valuation of several million euros.
Those figures do not establish theft, corruption or unlawful enrichment, and no serious journalist should pretend that they do. But the disparity is large enough to justify persistent investigation. How much did Haradinaj actually pay for those properties. From whom were they acquired. Under what privatisation procedures. How were purchases financed. What was the valuation at acquisition. What subsequent developments caused the declared value to reach millions. Kosovo’s postwar elite has for too long treated questions about extraordinary wealth as insults rather than the elementary business of democratic scrutiny. A former combatant who becomes a multimillionaire is not automatically a criminal. He is, however, no more exempt from questions than a banker, minister or businessman would be.
The greater scandal on Thursday is institutional. What exactly does Kosovo’s media regulator believe broadcasting responsibility means when a convicted intimidator is permitted to tell citizens on national television that they will burn if they celebrate a court judgment. The answer cannot simply be that the broadcaster did not itself make the threat. Television channels are not passive pipes through which anything may be pumped without consequence. Live broadcasting creates particular responsibilities because dangerous statements can reach hundreds of thousands of people before editorial intervention is possible.
The journalist did the correct first thing by challenging him and asking what he meant. Haradinaj’s answer removed rather than created ambiguity. Once he repeated and expanded the warning, the broadcaster had an obligation to contextualise him immediately. Viewers should have been told that the speaker had previously been convicted by the Specialist Chambers of intimidation during criminal proceedings. The presenter should have challenged the apparent threat directly. The network should have made clear that people have a lawful right to celebrate or protest peacefully irrespective of the verdict. The station should now preserve the complete recording and provide it to competent authorities if requested.
The Independent Media Commission should open a review of the broadcast. It should determine whether broadcasting standards concerning violence, intimidation and the protection of the public were met, and whether the broadcaster responded adequately once the nature of Haradinaj’s remarks became unmistakable. Freedom of expression does not oblige a regulator to pretend that threats of people “burning” are normal democratic speech. Nor does media freedom require broadcasters to sanitise dangerous rhetoric by presenting it as ordinary political disagreement.
More importantly, Kosovo’s prosecutorial authorities should act. They should obtain the complete footage, establish the context, take Haradinaj’s statement, examine whether he was speaking on behalf of anyone else and determine whether the remarks constitute an offence under Kosovo law. If the evidence establishes a criminal threat or intimidation, prosecutors should charge him. If a court convicts him, imprisonment would not be excessive. It would be the entirely rational response of a state that understands that liberty belongs to victims as well as veterans.
Haradinaj has every right to support Hashim Thaçi. He has every right to believe the prosecution is wrong. He may condemn the Specialist Chambers, criticise its evidence, campaign for acquittal and celebrate if the defendants walk free. What he does not possess is the right to terrorise other citizens into silence. He does not possess the right to tell the relatives of murdered people that their own celebration could end with them burning. He does not possess the right to transform his political allegiance into a veto over another family’s grief.
If the court acquits the accused, their families and supporters must be free to celebrate without intimidation. If the court convicts any of them, victims and their families must enjoy exactly the same freedom. There cannot be one Kosovo in which the supporters of powerful former commanders may fill public squares while the families of murdered journalists, political activists, soldiers and civilians are instructed to stay indoors because Nasim Haradinaj has warned them of fire.
That is the point Kosovo’s institutions must establish now, before 16 September, not afterwards. No verdict belongs to one political faction. No street belongs to one veterans’ association. No bereaved family should have to ask whether it is safe to express relief. A man already convicted for intimidating participants in criminal justice has once again introduced the language of violent punishment into the orbit of a major criminal proceeding. The state should treat that fact with the seriousness it deserves.
If Kosovo allows a convicted intimidator to threaten citizens on television and answers with institutional silence, the message to victims is devastating. It says that powerful men may still define the boundaries of public courage. It says that the relatives of the dead may seek justice, but only quietly. It says that a court may deliver a judgment, but political enforcers retain the power to determine who is allowed to welcome it.
That cannot be accepted. Nasim Haradinaj’s past conviction did not strip him of his freedom of expression, but freedom of expression is not freedom to criminally threaten others. If prosecutors establish that his statement crossed that line, he should be prosecuted without hesitation and, upon conviction, sent back to prison. Not because he is a veteran. Not because he supports Thaçi. Not because his views are offensive. He should face prison because no citizen has the right to terrorise another citizen out of exercising lawful liberty, and no convicted intimidator should be permitted to discover that the republic is too frightened to enforce that principle.
What, precisely, is on trial in The Hague?
That question has lingered over Kosovo since the first indictments were announced by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers. It has divided families, fractured political discourse and fuelled a debate that too often mistakes emotion for law. For many Kosovars, the prosecution of
Nasim Haradinaj speaking on TV T7 on Thursday, Aug 20, 2026.
Nasim Haradinaj: Përndryshe, duhet me e dit që e jo Kosova, po tanë shqiptaria ka mu kall flakë. Se disa po mendojnë edhe me festu, po ata që do të festojnë ato ditë, besoj se do të kallen n'qatë zjarm.
Moderatorja: Për çfarë e keni fjalën zoti Haradinaj?
Haradinaj: E kom krejt fjalën për krejt çka thashë. Kemi individë që po thonë se do të vijnë me festuar nëse merret një vendim dënues, por edhe nëse merret ai vendim do të rrotullohet. Unë mendoj që ka me u eskalu çështja shumë keq, dhe do të digjet flakë ky vend. Do të digjet flakë Maqedonia, do të digjet flakë shqyptaria Nuk mundem me i marrë vendimet të cilat... Unë po them thjesht. Nuk mund me i marrë këta vendime të cilat e trazojnë një vend të cilin 26 shtete kanë bashkëluftuar me to dhe kanë pasur bashkëluftëtarë. Prandaj, ata nëse vijnë me festu n'Kosovë n'atë kohë që mendojnë kur Kosova digjet flakë, duhet me e ditë që kanë me u djeg ata, nuk kanë me festu.
