Facing Up

NEED TO KNOW

Facing Up

Kosovo’s leaders are calling on a French court to release Ramush Haradinaj, an ex-prime minister and former guerrilla fighter who allegedly kidnapped, tortured and killed Serbian civilians during the tiny Balkan country’s war of independence against Serbia in the late 1990s.

His nickname was Rambo, according to Balkan Insight, a respected local news group.

French authorities arrested Haradinaj, 48, last week at the behest of Serbia, where officials are now preparing extradition papers to put him on trial, the Associated Press reported.

“It is sad how some countries still respect the decisions of the former Milosevic regime,” said Haradinaj, who is now an opposition leader. He was referring to Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president during the war who died in 2006 in The Hague while facing charges of genocide and other war crimes.

A day after Haradinaj’s arrest, Kosovo levied war crime charges against an unnamed Serb extradited from Bosnia-Herzegovina, saying...