Hague court jails Hashim Thaçi for 25 years over KLA war crimes

Hashim Thaçi, the former president of Kosovo and a wartime commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, was sentenced on Wednesday, 16 September, to 25 years in prison by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague. Presiding Judge Charles Smith read the sentence while Thaçi, 58, stood in a suit and said nothing. He has denied the charges throughout. His brother Gani said the family will wait for the appeal.

The court found Thaçi criminally responsible, as part of a joint criminal enterprise, for the murder of 96 people, the torture of 303, the cruel treatment of 49 and the arbitrary detention of 385. The victims were political opponents and people the KLA treated as collaborators with Serbian forces. The judges said the vast majority were innocent civilians who had not taken part in hostilities and presented no legitimate security concern.

Smith described the common plan in plain terms. The KLA set up detention facilities in areas it controlled, identified people it saw as opponents, arrested them, held them and, when the group chose, killed them. Prosecutors had asked for 45 years. The bench gave 25 and credited time already served.

Three co-defendants, six counts dropped

Jakup Krasniqi, the KLA’s former spokesman, also received 25 years. Kadri Veseli, former head of intelligence, received 18 years. Rexhep Selimi, former head of operations, received 13 years. All four were acquitted of six counts of crimes against humanity. The judges said prosecutors had not proved a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population, the legal element that turns a set of war crimes into crimes against humanity.

That split matters in Pristina and in Belgrade. War-crimes convictions of KLA commanders are treated by many Kosovo Albanians as an attack on the independence story. The acquittal on the humanity counts is treated by Serbian officials as incomplete. Both readings were visible outside the court, where supporters scuffled with Dutch police, and at a rally in Pristina that called for acquittal.

Thaçi still faces a separate case on witness intimidation. He has pleaded not guilty. Judgment in that file has not been delivered.

Why a special court in The Hague

The Specialist Chambers were created because Kosovo’s own courts were not trusted to try KLA leaders. The court applies Kosovo law and sits in the Netherlands. It has always been opposed by a large part of the Kosovo political class. Thaçi left the presidency after the indictment and has been in detention for years. The 1998-99 war included crimes by Serbian forces and by the KLA. This verdict addresses one command group on one side. It does not write the full history of the war. It does fix a number, 25 years, to the former president who led the wartime movement and later the state.

Appeals will take years. The immediate fact is that four men who once ran the KLA now have firm sentences, and that the most serious international-law label on the indictment did not stick.