Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office (KSC) is a court of Kosovo, located in The Hague (Netherlands), hosting four Specialist Chambers and the Specialist Prosecutors Office, which may perform their activities either at the KRSJI or in Kosovo. The court is set up for the trials of the alleged crimes committed by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic-Albanian paramilitary organisation which sought the separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia during the 1990s and the eventual creation of a Greater Albania. The alleged crimes concern the period 1998-2000, at the end of the Kosovo war and directly afterwards against "ethnic minorities and political opponents". The court is to be established in 2016. It will be separate from other Kosovar institutions, and independent. It will be composed of a Specialist Prosecutor’s Office and four Specialist Chambers, themselves comprising Judges’ Chambers and a Registry.

In December 2016 Ekaterina Trendafilova has been elected first president.

Background
In 2001, Swiss politician Dick Marty authored a Council of Europe-report in which he noted war crimes had been committed by the KLA. Partly based on that report, the prosecutor of the Special Investigative Taskforce (SITF) of the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX Kosovo) concluded sufficient evidence existed for prosecution of "war crimes, crimes against humanity as well as certain crimes against Kosovan law". The court is located outside Kosovo on request of the prosecutor in order to provide adequate protection to witnesses.

Legal basis and organisation
Unlike many other non-Dutch judicial institutions in The Hague, the Kosovo Relocated Specialist Judicial Institution will not be an international court, but a court constituted through Kosovan legislation. To provide a proper legal basis for the court, Kosovo's constitution was amended (amendment 24) and Law No.05/L-053 on specialist chambers and specialist prosecutor's office was approved.

The court will be staffed by EU personnel and will have international judges only. The costs of the court will be born by the EU as part of its Common Foreign and Security Policy. The four specialized chambers are all chambers of corresponding regular Kosovar institutions:
 * The court of first instance of Pristina
 * The court of Appeal
 * Supreme Court
 * Constitutional Court

Judges
The judges appointed to serve in the Court are:
 * 1) Keith Raynor (Vice-President), United Kingdom
 * 2) Roland Dekkers (Specialist Chamber of the Constitutional Court), Netherlands
 * 3) Anne Power-Forde (Specialist Chamber of the Constitutional Court), Ireland
 * 4) Vidar Stensland (Specialist Chamber of the Constitutional Court), Norway
 * 5) Antonio Balsamo (Specialist Chamber of the Constitutional Court, Reserve Judge), Italy
 * 6) Kai Ambos, Germany
 * 7) Christoph Barthe, Germany
 * 8) Michael Bohlander, Germany
 * 9) Emilio Gatti, Italy
 * 10) Nicolas Guillou, France
 * 11) Thomas Laker, Germany
 * 12) Guénaël Mettraux, Switzerland
 * 13) Vladimir Mikula, Czech Republic
 * 14) Andres Parmas, Estonia
 * 15) Michèle Picard, France
 * 16) Kenneth Roberts, Canada
 * 17) Charles Smith III, United States of America
 * 18) Mappie Veldt-Foglia, Netherlands
 * 19) Christine van den Wyngaert, Belgium