Kosovo’s Special Prosecution indicts pro-Iranian radical for inciting terrorist acts

Kosovo’s Special Prosecution said on Wednesday that it has indicted Ikballe Berisha-Huduti for posting a message on Facebook calling for revenge after the US killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike at Baghdad airport in January.

“Iranian people took to the streets immediately after the American crime to strongly condemn the injustice,” Berisha-Huduti wrote on Facebook on January 4, using an account that was later deleted.

“May God give them patience because by assassinating the lord of the house, you have assassinated all the family members, and then revenge becomes an obligation, but it has no boundaries,” she added.

Huduti-Berisha was arrested in January and remanded in custody for 30 days by a Pristina court.

The Islamic Community, which represents believers in the mainly Muslim country, said in a statement immediately after Berisha-Huduti’s comment that she never worked for the organisation, and added that her remarks were not to be seen as truly Islamic.

It said that it was clear that she was also a follower of the Shia tradition within Islam “which was unknown among us [in Kosovo] before”. Almost all Kosovo Muslims are Sunni. The Shia tradition is predominant in Iran and Iraq.

Kosovo’s staunchly pro-US leadership has backed controversial assassination of the Iranian general that was ordered by President Donald Trump, as did the equally pro-American leaders of neighbouring Albania.

Berisha-Huduti has been known to the security services since 2015, when a police operation raided NGOs linked to Iran as a part of attempts to counter religious extremism.

In 2016, an Islamic organisation that she had founded was closed, although no charges were pressed.

She has remained a strong supporter of the more hardline anti-American elements in Tehran, and has a public photo on her Facebook account of Iran’s former hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Source: Balkan Insight