Questions of the Legal Status of a Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office

Abstract

In the current conditions of the active development of the international criminal justice system from the Nuremberg and TokyoWar Crimes Tribunals, and after – the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, international criminaljudicial authorities of the so-called «new wave» or «third generation» are in the field of view of the science of international law, thestudy of the legal and institutional foundations of which represents significant scientific and practical interest.
 The legal and institutional foundations of the activities of a Special Court in Kosovo (the name also used to denote the KosovoSpecialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office) in the science of international law, in our opinion, has not sufficiently studied.We believe that this is due both to the fact that this Court, as new type of international criminal justice, was created recently, aswell as to the insignificant and contradictory practice of its judicial activity.Considering the foregoing, the aim of the article is to study the legal and institutional foundations and activities of a Special Courtto investigate war and other international crimes that were committed on the territory of Kosovo and which occupies a special place inthe international criminal justice system, given the specific features of its creation and activities, the formations of its international andnational components.The scientific novelty of the research results is that a comprehensive study of the legal and institutional foundations of the creationand activities of the Court, in Ukraine is being done for the first time.As the same time, during the scientific study, it was taken into account that this Court was created with the active participationof the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the European Union and also individual countries, as well as Kosovo in ordered to pro -secute for the commission of international crimes during the armed conflict in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, the «winners» –the former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK), who were never prosecuted for their commissions of international crimesduring the activities of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).