Prishtina, 6 November 2026
We have returned to the Kosovo Institute of Crimes Committed During the War to meet with its Director, Dr Atdhe Hetemi, and his staff. On this occasion, I, as Prime Minister, received the Institute’s annual work report from them. This is the third time I have received the report from Director Hetemi. It outlines impressive achievements, demonstrating just how much the Institute was needed and how closely various organisations, institutions, municipalities across Kosovo and citizens of the Republic, as well as partners beyond Kosovo, are working with it.
At the end of July, we published the preliminary list of victims killed during the war, comprising 13,195 verified individuals for the period 1998–2000.
The database is updated daily, and the results of the latest updates will be published in six months, that is, at the end of January 2027.
Another achievement has been the publication of the first scholarly volume by the prestigious international publishing house Routledge, featuring 12 academic papers, as well as the organization of the second international scientific conference, attended by more than 200 participants, on the scale, adjudication and documentation of crimes committed during the war in Kosovo.
A forum was also organised with survivors of the poisonings that took place at the beginning of the 1990s, in the final decade of the last century, when the new genocide that Serbia would commit following the abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989 was foreshadowed.
We have also expanded international cooperation through various agreements with partner institutions. In the first year, there were seven agreements; in the second year, ten; and now, in the third year, 21 agreements. These cover professional training for staff in various countries and cooperation in areas of mutual interest.
Cooperation has also taken place with Kosovo’s embassies and consulates to present the Institute’s work internationally to the global public, including the crimes committed and the documentation we have compiled, through various exhibitions.
We have also collected testimonies and interviewed survivors, conducting more than 127 interviews out of approximately 1,000 planned under the “Memory of Massacres” project. The continuous enrichment of the Institute’s archive, which I also visited on this occasion, through the collection, digitization and verification of documentary materials on crimes committed during the war, is a major achievement of the Institute. It is becoming an institutional repository of memory for the history of our people.
A solid documentary and scholarly foundation is thus being established to preserve historical truth. At the same time, this is an extremely valuable archive for the justice system, particularly the State Prosecutor’s Office, so that the truth can be established, accountability pursued, and all those who ordered and perpetrated crimes against Albanians as part of various Serbian forces operating under the leadership of Milošević’s regime can be tried and convicted in our Republic.
There is now also the possibility of convicting them in absentia. And I believe you have all noticed that the number of those being indicted, tried and convicted is increasing from year to year.
Once again, I thank Director Atdhe Hetemi and all his colleagues, who are working tirelessly to make up for lost time and, at the same time, to leave future generations as rich a documented legacy as possible about what happened to their parents and grandparents.