Acting Prime Minister Albin Kurti has commemorated the anniversary of the murder of Smajl Hajdaraj, former member of the Kosovo Assembly and veteran of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
On the 24th anniversary of Hajdaraj's murder, Prime Minister Kurti says that he was shot and killed near his apartment in Peja, by unknown persons ordered by other unknown circles.
"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 the murder of Smajl Hajdaraj." - Kurti wrote on Facebook.
Kurti also recalled that Smajl Hajdaraj was elected a member of the Kosovo Assembly in the first parliamentary elections after the war, while he was a mathematics professor who, having been excluded from the education system by the Serbian regime in 1990, was 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 deputies of the first legislature of the Kosovo Assembly, but his service was violently interrupted by the assassination of him," Kurti added.
Kurti emphasized that 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 the entire society and our people," he said.
