Ten years after Astrit Dehari died at the Detention Center in Prizren, the family’s lawyer, Tomë Gashi, has called on the Special Prosecution to conclude its investigation and issue a final decision.
Speaking outside the Prosecutor’s Office, Gashi reiterated his position that Dehari was murdered and alleged that several former justice officials tried to present the case as a suicide.
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“We are outside the Special Prosecution of the Republic of Kosovo, the institution with the authority and responsibility to investigate high-profile cases. Astrit Dehari’s family expects this prosecution to bring the matter to a conclusion. Based on the evidence we have, the only conclusion is that Astrit Dehari was murdered. Exactly 10 years have passed since his murder, and we know that several prosecutors tried to close the case as a suicide before completing the initial investigation,” Gashi said.
The lawyer named Sylë Hoxha, the former chief prosecutor of the Basic Prosecution in Prizren, against whom he said he had filed a criminal complaint on behalf of the Dehari family. According to Gashi, the matter has yet to be resolved.
“Sylë Hoxha, then chief prosecutor of the Basic Prosecution in Prizren, told the State Prosecutor’s Office that Astrit Dehari had committed suicide. I filed a criminal complaint on behalf of the family over those statements and the attempt to manipulate justice. It is in the hands of this prosecution, but there has still been no resolution,” Gashi said.
He also raised allegations concerning the release of footage from security cameras at the prison in Prizren. According to Gashi, Baton Haxhiu, the former director of Klan Kosova, obtained a CD containing recordings of the corridor and other parts of the prison and published them before the prosecutor in the case had access to them.
“Another painful issue was the attempt to influence public opinion through certain journalists. The public information we have verified shows that Baton Haxhiu obtained a CD with footage from the Prizren prison, including the corridor and other areas, and published it to manipulate public opinion before the prosecutor in the case had access to it,” Gashi said.
These are allegations made by the lawyer and do not constitute judicial findings regarding the responsibility of the people named.
Gashi said he had met with several prosecutors who had handled the case, including the current prosecutor. He hopes the latter will issue a decision that establishes the truth in legal terms.
“I have held frequent meetings with former prosecutors and with the prosecutor currently handling the case. The family and I expect him to finally make a decision and state the truth in legal terms. As for the facts, we and everyone else know that Astrit was murdered,” he said.
The lawyer also referred to materials that, he said, support the family’s claim that Dehari was murdered, including photographs of his body and analyses conducted in Switzerland.
“Anyone who has seen some of the photographs of Astrit Dehari’s body can, in our firm belief, understand that they are the main evidence that he was murdered. We also have documentation from the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Switzerland which, in our view, rules out even the theoretical possibility of suicide. The Swiss forensic examinations are reliable and fully credible; analysis of the evidence sent there also found the DNA of a third person,” Gashi said.
Astrit Dehari’s mother, Xhemile Dehari, expressed dissatisfaction with the delays in the proceedings and said the family was still waiting for answers from the Prosecutor’s Office. She described the past ten years as a difficult period, adding that, in her view, each new prosecutor had started the investigation from the beginning.
“Ten years have passed, not one or two days. This has been a harrowing experience for the family. The Prosecutor’s Office has never issued a decision, and we have been waiting all this time. It is difficult for us. Every time another prosecutor arrives, they start from the beginning, while we wait until they retire,” Xhemile Dehari said.
She hopes the new prosecutor will conclude the case and give the family answers about the circumstances of Astrit’s death.
“I hope the prosecutor who has taken over the case now, being new to it, will manage to bring it to a conclusion before retiring. We want a resolution and to understand what happened, especially now that we are at this age. Astrit’s story is a long one. The murder happened in prison, but we still do not know how it happened, and no one has given us an answer,” his mother said.
Xhemile Dehari said family members had been called to the Prosecutor’s Office a few days earlier to discuss the case. She said they had been received better this time, but stressed that they would assess the prosecutors’ work only after seeing results.
“Three days ago, we were invited to the Prosecutor’s Office to talk. They told us they were ready to cooperate with us. We had also met prosecutor Afrim Shefkiu before, but we were not received properly and it felt as if he was trying to get rid of us. This time, we were received better. We will judge their work when we see the results. We do not know what will happen, or how or when they will conclude the case. They did not give us a deadline because they cannot know themselves. We are waiting, but we do not know how long this will take,” she said.
Astrit Dehari died on November 5, 2016, at the Detention Center in Prizren, where he was being held in pretrial detention. His family continues to call for the circumstances to be fully established and for the Special Prosecution to conclude its investigation.
Astrit’s father, Avni Dehari, accused former prosecutor Sylë Hoxha of trying to classify his son’s death as a suicide just 13 days after the incident.
“Sylë Hoxha, who was a prosecutor at the Basic Prosecution in Prizren at the time, tried to present the death as a suicide within 13 days, presumably on the orders of the government then in power. Independent forensic doctors from Tirana and Besim Latifi from Prishtina, who works in London, presented evidence that this was not a suicide but a murder. Other evidence supports this as well. In our view, this was also confirmed by the forensic report from Switzerland, which the prosecutors at the time did not take into account. Four prosecutors dragged out the case from the beginning until 2025, when they retired,” Avni Dehari said.
He said he hoped changes within the justice institutions and the involvement of the new prosecutor would help resolve the case. According to him, family members met with representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office on November 3 in what he described as a constructive meeting.
“There have been some changes: we now have a different chief state prosecutor and a Special Prosecution prosecutor handling the case. We held a constructive meeting on November 3, and we hope there will be results. We are now waiting to see how the investigation proceeds and how it concludes,” Avni Dehari said.
Astrit Dehari died on November 5, 2016, at the Detention Center in Prizren. His family continues to call for the investigation to be concluded and the circumstances of his death to be fully established.
