(ILEAD LECTURE EVENT) Kosovo Today: Emerging from the Rubble

The war in Kosovo in 1998-99 and Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 were headline events in their day. Recently, Kosovo has been back in the headlines as one of the justifications for Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea. So what do we need to know about Kosovo?
This special ILEAD lecture will be presented by Dean Pineles, a retired Vermont trial judge who worked as an international criminal judge with the European Union in Kosovo from 2011-13. He will describe
important historical, cultural and demographic features of this tiny troubled country in the Balkans, including the war and its aftermath. This will serve as the backdrop for a discussion of several of his high profile criminal cases, including a war crimes case and an international human organ trafficking case. He will also discuss the legacy of Kosovo in light of the geopolitical chess game in Ukraine.

Dean Pineles is a graduate of Brown University, Boston University Law School, and Harvard’s Kennedy School. Prior to his 21 years of service as a Vermont trial judge, Dean also served as legal counsel to Governor Richard Snelling, as Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Labor and Industry, as Deputy Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health, and as an Assistant Attorney General. He took on numerous international Rule of Law assignments in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Georgia. From 2011-2013, Dean spent 28 months as an international criminal judge in Kosovo, dealing with a variety of high profile cases that included war crimes, organized crime, judicial corruption, and illegal organ trafficking. He has been a resident of Stowe since 1974, and retired from the Vermont bench in 2005.