Kosovo Trip Puts Chicago Law Student on War Crime Case Defense Team

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International Law

Kosovo Trip Puts Chicago Law Student on War Crime Case Defense Team

Posted Apr 29, 2008, 04:07 pm CDT
By Martha Neil

For a Chicago law student, a summer project in Kosovo to help a professor research a book in 2005 became a career-changing experience.

An accidental tourist in the world of Balkan war crimes, as the Chicago Tribune puts it, Andrew Strong found himself on the outskirts of Ramush Haradinaj's coterie as the onetime rebel leader, then newly indicted on charges of murder and torture, sought to put together a defense.

Waiting in a hallway to meet Haradinaj as he left to plead not guilty at The Hague, Strong began talking with a consultant from Dublin who was organizing a legal team and "realized he had a rare opportunity to train in international law," the newspaper recounts. Seizing the opportunity, he piped up "Can I help?"

Three years later, Strong, now 28, plans to return to Chicago-Kent College of Law this fall, after a leave of absence, and finish earning his law degree. Meanwhile, he served as a researcher to help Haradinaj—who Strong believes is factually innocent—win an acquittal this month. In the process, he sat courtside at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and spent time, with a translator, in the hills of western Kosovo, interviewing hundreds of ethnic Albanians and Serbs for a lengthy report on the region's history of conflict.

Says Michael O'Reilly, the Irish consultant who retained Strong: "He's a very idealistic guy. And he's a very moral sort—the kind of upright American that people, or some people, don't know that well anymore."

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