UNMIK/PR/1493
PRISTINA – The management of the Lipjan/Lipljan Prison was handed over by UNMIK’s Penal Management Division to the Kosovo Correctional Service (KCS) today. The hand over ceremony was presided over by the Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Kosovo (DSRSG) for the Police and Justice Pillar, Jean Dussourd.
The DSRSG congratulated the new KCS Prison Director of the Lipjan/Lipljan Prison, Valon Maxharraj, and the new Kosovar KCS Commissioner Xhevat Mexhuani who was appointed to the post recently.
“We are in a very important day for the correctional system in Kosovo. It has been prepared in a long and strategic process by our colleagues from the penal management division in order to create a brand new democratic correctional system, and to give the floor to our Kosovar friends,” Mr. Dussourd said.
“What has been done in Lipjan/Lipljan prison is a good example of this success, and a good symbol of this permanent will to prepare a democratic and international prisons standards system for Kosovo. We are more and more in an EU perspective, we are more and more in the implementation of Rule of Law standards in Kosovo, and I think that the correctional system, with a lot of difficulties like in many countries, has shown a great example in this success,” he added.
All the five Detention Centres have already been handed over to the KCS, and the Lipjan/Lipljan Prison is the first of Kosovo’s two prisons to be transferred to Kosovar management. Today’s handover marks another successful step towards complete transition by the Penal Management Division. The Lipjan/Lipljan Prison is also important in that it is the only prison establishment which has both Kosovo Albanian and Kosovo Serb staff working together in harmony.
The handover ceremony was attended among others by the Director of the Department of Justice Albert Moskowitz and Head of the Penal Management Division William Irvine.
