(Adds reaction from Haraqija) AMSTERDAM, April 25 (Reuters) - Prosecutors at the U.N. war crimes tribunal have indicted two Kosovo Albanians, including a former minister, for allegedly interfering with a witness during the trial of Kosovo's former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj. According to the indictment, last July former culture minister Astrit Haraqija and a ministry employee Bajrush Morina tried to persuade a protected witness not to testify against Haradinaj, the court said in a statement on Friday. Both have been charged with contempt of court. "I trust in justice and I will answer the invitation [to The Hague]," Haraqija told Reuters, adding he had been interviewed several times before. A panel of tribunal judges cleared Haradinaj, a Kosovo Liberation Army commander in a 1998-99 war for independence from Serbia, at the start of April of all charges of torture, rape, murder and persecution of Serbs during the conflict. But it noted "significant difficulties encountered by the Chamber in securing testimony of a large number of witnesses". The court said in a statement the witness in question was granted protection in 2005 and his unedited statements were disclosed only to Haradinaj, his two co-defendants and their lawyers. According to the indictment Haraqija was one of three co-founders of the "Defence committee for Ramush Haradinaj" and upon learning of the identity of the witness in July he instructed Morina to travel to the witness's country of residence to persuade him not to testify against Haradinaj. Morina met the witness on a trip paid for by the ministry, prosecutors allege. "The witness refused to succumb to the pressure and eventually testified at the trial," the court said. The contempt indictment was first filed to the court in January. (Reporting by Alexandra Hudson and Fatos Bytyci, edited by Philippa Fletcher)
A genocide survivor walks a past a flame lit outside the Genocide Museum after a grenade attack in Kigali April 11, 2007. A grenade thrown by an unknown attacker killed a ...
