Some 130,000 Kosovo Albanians urged the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to release the province's former premier Ramush Haradinaj pending the start of war crimes trial, local media reported Saturday. The petition was signed in past couple of days throughout Kosovo, where a majority of two million local Albanians strongly believe that the indictment against Haradinaj was in a fact "cooked" by Serbian authorities. Haradinaj, 36, a former top guerrilla commander during the 1998-99 Kosovo war, was charged with 37 counts of war crimes. In his first appearance before the judges in The Hague, Haradinaj pleaded not guilty to each of the 37 counts of war crimes allegedly committed in 1998, several months before NATO air forces intervened against Serbian troops in Kosovo. The signing of petition was organized by Haradinaj's Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) - a junior coalition partner in the government led by the province's strongest party - Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK).
