Former president of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi, declared guilty of war crimes

BarcelonaThe Kosovo Specialist Chambers has declared former president Hashim Thaçi guilty of war crimes committed during the 1998-1999 war as a leader of the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army. The court, based in The Hague, which tries war crimes and crimes against humanity during the conflict, has sentenced Thaçi to 25 years in prison for crimes including the murder of 96 political opponents and alleged collaborators with Serbia, the illegal detention of 385 people, torture of 303, and the mistreatment of about 50.

In the verdict, which ends in the first instance a trial that began in 2023, the court notes that the former Kosovar president "actively participated in and encouraged crimes" and the existence of a "joint criminal enterprise" against opponents of the KLA. However, the court has acquitted Thaçi of six of the ten crimes against humanity he was accused of, and the sentence was lower than the 45 years requested by the Prosecutor's Office.

Besides Thaçi, the court also convicted three high-ranking KLA commanders. The decision comes more than two decades after a war that ended with the Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo and which still today continues to have a significant weight in relations between Pristina and Belgrade.

The court's decision was highly anticipated in both Kosovo and Serbia. Thaçi, who has denied all accusations, stood silent while the judge read the verdict. The former president is a figure revered by many Kosovo Albanians, to the point that, in the Kosovar capital, thousands of people watched the verdict on a giant screen, with jeers at the sentence, tears, and shouts in favor of Thaçi. Supporters of the former president have also protested in Pristina against the conviction with KLA flags. Protests have also taken place in The Hague, a few kilometers from the court where the verdict of a process that totals nearly 30,000 pages, with some 270 witness statements, was read.

Four key figures of the KLA

Thaçi was Prime Minister of Kosovo between 2008 and 2014 and President between 2016 and 2020, when he resigned after the indictment for war crimes was confirmed. During the period to which the accusation refers, Thaçi had directed the policy and information areas of the KLA and, at the end of March 1999, he was Prime Minister of the provisional government of Kosovo and commander-in-chief of the organization.

The other three convicted are Kadri Veseli (18 years in prison), Rexhep Selimi (13 years) and Jakup Krasniqi (25 years), all three high commanders of the KLA. Veseli was a member of the organization's political leadership and head of its intelligence services, while Selimi had directed the operational area and Krasniqi had been a member of the political leadership and official spokesperson.

The four defendants had been in the prison facilities of the Hague tribunal since November 2020. In the final statement at the trial, Thaçi's lawyer described the case as "incoherent internment" and asserted that it had not been proven that there was a "criminal plan" by the KLA to "gain and exercise control over the whole of Kosovo" through these crimes. In the speech in which he announced his resignation, the former Kosovar president stressed that no indictment "can distort history" because Serbia was "the aggressor" and Kosovo "the victim" in that conflict.