Kosovo has not yet a legislation that will regulate the surveillance of individuals under suspicions of wrongdoing. The extension of competences to several law-enforcement mechanisms on phone tapping has created tremendous problems and serious breach of privacy. Some 700 to 1000 people are put under surveillance by authorities in a time span of one month. This is too high a number for a country of 1,7 million people.

Pristine / Kosovo - July - Before the investigations were done, the secretary of the Ministry of Transport, Skender Gashi, learned his phone was tapped. He was being under surveillance over suspicions of setting up the exams for driving licence of a female thought to be close with Mr. Gashi. The tapped conversation was disclosed from the police and the officials of the mobile phone operator he was using. Gashi, however, was never charged of any wrongdoing. He says that everybody abused with his case. According to law he was supposed to be called from the courts and the audio-material to be erased on his presence.

There is no specific law that regulates the phone tapping, except for the very general requirements that says there can be no phone tapping without consent from a judge.

The police had consent for tapping the phone of Mr. Gashi, but this requirement is not always respected. In another case of a high official investigated over corruption at the Ministry of Transport, the EU mission of law, EULEX, has yet to bring the case at front of the court. However, there are already SMSs published from a communication of an the head of staff for the Ministry, Endrit Shala, in so-called Limaj Case, on which the former-minister of transport is been suspected of siphoning off around 80 million Euros.

The sources from Prosecutor’s office say that the material from phone tapping was disclosed by the police. A police officer is believed to have disclosed this material from the Limaj case investigation. The Prishtina District Court did not confirm consent was given for surveying of any phone related to Limaj Case. There was one SMS that in investigator’s view talked about 500 thousand Euros to be given to the branch of Limaj’s political party, PDK, branch of Gjilan area. According to these record the sms is from March 2009 and came from communication of a businessman from this city with Endrit Shala, chief of staff of the Limaj’s ministry.

The record shows that the businessman F.Z. says to Shala that he was not at all satisfied with the fact that he was not invited on a dinner carried out by the PDK. “My friend, I gave 5 thousand euros for the Party and you know it.... you see they have called other people in this dinner”, says SMS. This was the original SMS possessed by Limaj’s lawyer, but the material that is in possession of the Prosecutor has the figure transformed into 500 thousand Euros. After these recordings were submitted by the police and prosecutor, Shala has acquired, according to him, the original material from the mobile operator.

The police involved on this case prefer to be anonym. He has another version of this story. He no longer works for the police. “No one can ever give any evidence that I was the one to disclose these SMSs neither made any set up of these communications”, says he. However, after these allegations he left his work on police to be employed in the mobile operator that supplied police with these records, PTK, where he is at leas 10 times more paid from the job of police.

The Prosecutor has ordered an examination of this material that came from communications that could serve as evidence for incrimination of the former-minister of transport, Fatmir Limaj. The latter’s defence has asked this examination. His lawyer Tahir Rrecaj says this is a pure set up. “This police has falsified the material after somebody’s request”, says Rrecaj.

On the other hand Mr. Shala refuses to make any comment. He asserts only that he will push a case in Prosecutor’s office. He doesn’t specify against whom though. EULEX typically does not give any information over a case that’s been under investigation. They don’t even say if there was an order for phone tapping over the Limaj case. What is known is the high stakes EULEX has put on this case when they blatantly intervened on the Ministry of Transport and arrested the minister Limaj at front of the cameras of national TVs.

The police gives no information over this case, but simply says “the police never starts a phone tap before having a consent from the court”. However, the head of Anti-crime Unite of Kosovo Police, Gazmend Hoxha, claims that the person alleged to have disclosed the Limaj case phone tapping content already left the police by the time he has supposedly released this confidential material.

Chief Prosecutor of the Prishtina District Court, Aleksander Lumezi, expresses his concern over the way the police is handling these cases and the material that comes out of them. “We have had police officers who have leaked this information. There are even indictments on some cases and I believe there will be more of them” says Lumezi. He openly expresses the feeling of discomfort on the question of possibility of illegal phone tapping and disclosure of the materials acquired from this investigative activity of the police. “The rumor that everybody can be surveyed is a paranoia. However, there are information that some 30 intelligence services are active in Kosovo so I can not say that illegal surveying activities are not done”, says Lumezi.

Media and different organizations have had reports that say there are illegal surveying in Kosovo carried out also by un-authorised entities. IHPSO, was an organization founded by Rame Mara the “special advisor” of deceased president Ibrahim Rugova, and SHIK, an illegal intelligence service of PDK, both have been accused of carrying out illegal phone tapping and computer hacking. These allegations were never investigated by the law-enforcement mechanisms.

The possibility of editing of the legally acquired material is another concern in Kosovo. There are cases that during the transcription of phone tapping the material was editted under the influence of investigators. On the other hand, there are cases that on a consent for surveillance of a phone, other numbers may be added up by the police. In a case of arson the police managed to pull a list of 12 mobile phone numbers to be put under surveillance in the city of Vitia.

Though Prosecutor’s office insists the leak of the information over the phone tapping is done by the police, the latter claim they have found copies consents of judges on the premises that were raided by the police on suspected cases.

There are no official figures over the scale of phone tapping in Kosovo. The mobile operators talk about 700 to 1000 individuals that are put under surveillance each month in a country of less thn two million people.

The head of Prishtina District Court, Hamdi Ibrahimi, says that this court is flooded with requests of the police for phone tapping. “I can say that there are far more requests than one can presume for a country as small as Kosovo”, says he.

According to the data coming from different monitoring of the work of Prosecutor’s office, the cases with confirmed indictment based on phone tapping as evidence are in a scale of 80%. There is however another completely blurred are of Kosovo justice in the sense of surveillance of citizens. The Kosovo domestic judiciary has no idea how and what is happening on the side of EULEX, the EU mission of rule of law. “We simply have no access on their cases at all”, says head of the Prishtina District Court, Ibrahimi.

The legislation gives authority for this activity to Customs, Police, Prosecutor, and Kosovo Intelligence Agency. The judges that are exposed to these requests from the above-motioned institutions can not verify the legitimacy of these requests neither can they have any control over the way they are done and used. Judges have concerns about the premises these evidences are contained. A case of break in in the main room of evidences of the Kosovo Police has yielded a complete disappearance of the evidences stored on this room. No one has ever suffered any consequence over this scandal.

The head of the Kosovo Agency for Protecion of Personal Data, Ruzhdi Jashari, says the human rights are violated through the process of phone surveillance. “The surveillance is a difficult area to oversee and possibilities of manipulations are high”

Prosecutors and judges say there are cases when privacy of individuals is revealed through surveillance. There is no case that after the investigations were ceased an individual was informed he was under surveillance, which is a legal obligation for the authorities. They are also obliged to terminate these materials after the investigation is ceased.

An investigator himself surveyed by the local and international police under the condition of anonymity says he filed a case against several police officers. He was never informed over the fact that his phone was tapped. He claims these materials were also illegally leaked by the investigators. The Prosecution did not take any measure related to these allegations. On the other hand the mobile operator did not give any information over this case. The spokes man for PTK, Menduh Abazi, public mobile operator, says there were suspicions of PT employees involved on manipulations on surveillance of mobile phone. “They were removed from these jobs”, says Abazi.

The way mobile operators handle this activity is not regulated by law. No one has ever asked for any transparency from the two mobile operators in Kosovo, PTK and IPKO.

IPKO has a lot of collision with the authorities over their requests for phone surveillance. This operator does not offer at all this possibility for the Kosovo authorities if the SMSs exceed the time span of six months. EULEX seems to not have any problems with IPKO on this sense.

Mobile operators have never been hold accountable over the phone tapings. Kosovo Parliament has never even thought of any undertaking for this. Only now a piece of legislation is been prepared. This may solve some of the problems related to the surveillance done legally, but as confirmed by authorities, the illegal surveillance remains a serious problem as well.

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This investigation has been supported by the Danish Foundation for Investigative Journalism - SCOOP

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