Hague court gives Hashim Thaçi 25 years for Kosovo war crimes

Hashim Thaçi, who led Kosovo through its war with Serbia and later served as president, was sentenced on 16 September to 25 years in prison by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague. The panel convicted him of four war crimes: murder, torture, cruel treatment and arbitrary detention. He was 58. He stood in a suit and said nothing as Presiding Judge Charles Smith read the sentence.

The same bench sentenced three other former Kosovo Liberation Army commanders. Jakup Krasniqi received 25 years. Kadri Veseli received 18 years, including time already served. Rexhep Selimi received 13 years, including time served. All four men had denied the charges throughout the trial. Prosecutors had asked for a heavier term for Thaçi. Both sides can appeal.

The judges found that the four men were part of a joint criminal enterprise. Smith described the plan in plain language. The KLA, he said, set up detention sites in areas it controlled, identified people it treated as opponents, arrested them, held them, and killed them when commanders judged that necessary. The court counted 385 people held without due process, 303 tortured, 49 subjected to cruel treatment, and 96 murdered. Some victims were Kosovo Albanians labelled as collaborators or rivals. Others were members of ethnic minorities. In most cases, the judges said, there was no evidence that the victims had taken part in hostilities or posed a legitimate security threat.

The panel acquitted the defendants on six counts of crimes against humanity. Those counts required proof of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians. The judges said the prosecution had not met that test. The convictions that remain are war crimes tied to the 1998-1999 conflict, not a finding that the KLA ran a campaign against the civilian population as such.

Smith said Thaçi took part in the crimes and encouraged them. He promoted people who had committed offences and showed, in the judge’s words, a ruthless ability to remove political obstacles to his own command and that of other leaders. That finding matters in Kosovo, where Thaçi has long been treated by large parts of the public as the man who delivered independence rather than as a defendant.

Thaçi resigned the presidency nearly six years ago to face the indictment. He had been a guerrilla spokesman, then prime minister, then president. Western governments courted him after the 1999 NATO campaign. He sat at the Rambouillet talks. The Specialist Chambers were created later, under Kosovo law but staffed by international judges, after a Council of Europe report and a special prosecution office documented alleged KLA abuses. The court sits in the Netherlands because witnesses in Kosovo faced intimidation.

The verdict produced two scenes on the same day. In The Hague, supporters scuffled with Dutch police outside the EULEX compound and the court. In Pristina, crowds gathered to demand an acquittal. Thaçi’s brother Gani told reporters the family would wait for the appeal. Kosovo and Albanian political figures denounced the judgment. Serbia treated it as confirmation of a case it has pressed for years.

The numbers in the judgment are specific enough to survive the political argument. Ninety-six dead. Three hundred and three tortured. Three hundred and eighty-five detained. Those counts will be tested on appeal. They already change the official record of a war that Kosovo’s institutions have preferred to tell as a clean fight for statehood.

What the court did not do is equally clear. It did not convict on crimes against humanity. It did not sentence Thaçi to the rest of his life. It did not rule on the legitimacy of Kosovo’s independence. It ruled on four men and a detention system they ran while they fought Serbia. The gap between that holding and the street narrative in Pristina is now part of Balkan politics, and it will last longer than the news cycle around the sentence.