A senior Kosovo official on Friday criticized the length of the international trial process for detained former independence fighters charged with war crimes during and after the 1998-1999 war in the Balkan country.

Kosovo’s parliament speaker Glauk Konjufca left for The Hague, Netherlands, to meet with five ex-leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, including Kosovo’s ex-president Hashim Thaci and ex-parliament speaker Kadri Veseli. All five have denied wrongdoing. The first arrest was made in September 2020, three months after the charges were made public.

Konjufca criticized the lengthy process, citing suspects’ rights to be tried “within the most reasonable time frame possible.”

“We are not seeing that at the special court,” Konjufca told journalists. He is the first senior Kosovar leader to visit the war crime suspects. Last month Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama went to The Hague to meet Thaci.

A European Union-backed war crimes court, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and a linked prosecutor’s office, were established following a 2011 report by the Council of Europe.

Last month it sentenced to imprisonment two leaders of a Kosovo war veterans’ association for witness intimidation and obstructing justice.