by Albin Kurti, President of Kosovo. Translation Petrit Latifi

Today marks 24 years since January 17, 2002, assassins who have remained unknown since then killed Smajl Hajdaraj, a member of the Kosovo Assembly and a veteran of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Smajl Hajdaraj was shot and killed near his apartment in Peja, by unknown persons ordered by other unknown circles, since even after 24 years, the justice institutions have not solved his case.

The possible and suspected connections of this murder with other assassinations in those first years after the war in Kosovo have hinted at the political and divisive motives of the planners and executors of Smajl Hajdaraj’s murder.

A member of the Kosovo Assembly elected in the first parliamentary elections after the war, Smajl Hajdaraj was a mathematics professor who, having been expelled from the education system by the Serbian regime in 1990, had become politically engaged in the Democratic League of Kosovo party. In 1998, he joined the Kosovo Liberation Army, later being appointed commander of the regional headquarters for Rugova.

After the liberation of Kosovo in June 1999, Smajl Hajdaraj returned to work in the education system and his political engagement. He was one of the elected members of the first legislature of the Kosovo Assembly, but his service was violently interrupted by the assassination of him.
Politically motivated murders and the killings of political activists and veterans of the Kosovo Liberation Army are not ordinary crimes, but a blow to the political life of Kosovo and the progress of state-building in the Republic of Kosovo.

Therefore, it remains very important to fully uncover these murders, as a means of bringing justice to the victims, their families, their collaborators, and to our entire society and people.