Background
He was born into an ethnic Albanian family near Peć, part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
He was born into an ethnic Albanian family near Peć, part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Later he studied law.
His surname is derived from an ancestor hailing from the Kelmend region in northwest Albania. At the age of eighteen (in 1955), he was sentenced to one year in prison for criticizing the forced expulsion of Albanians to Turkey. Kelmendi was among the founders of Council for Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms in Pristina and on 3 May 1998 filed charges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague against Slobodan Milošević for crimes committed in Kosovo.
The next day their bodies were found shot dead in a gas station near Prishtina.
As the orders of the policemen were refused they killed Kastriot and Kushtrim and about thirty seconds later Bajram Kelmendi. After the war Nekibe Kelmendi (1944-2011) was elected a deputy of the Democratic League of Kosovo and served as Minister of Justice of Kosovo from 2008 to 2010.
Before his death Kelmendi had defended many political prisoners as well as an Albanian-language newspaper closed by the Serbian police.