ORDER ON MOTION TO DISMISS INDICTMENT

The object of this paper is a court order on motion to dismiss indictment in the Republic of Kosova. This order is a non-meritorious decision, by which the court dismisses the indictment because it lacks jurisdiction on procedural grounds. The order on the defendant’s motion constitutes a relatively common type of judgment rendered in criminal proceedings in Kosovo. This article will address such orders in several respects including the meaning of the order, its characteristics, grounds for dismissal and the authority to render it, as well as the procedure for and effects of reaching this type of verdict. To that effect, cases before the Basic Courts of Kosovo in which the defendant’s motion filed with the court asking the judge to throw out certain criminal charges during the proceedings in a period between 2015 and 2017 will be studied. The paper aims to foster the expectations that concrete actions should be taken to advance the performance of judges and prosecutors, highlighting the need to undertake a more effective vetting of public prosecutors and judges in the country. For this, there is an increasing support in local and international public opinion where the belief that Kosovo has already achieved a successful criminal justice system prevails. A legal, comparative, analytical and statistical methodology is used for the preparations of the present work