Pristina fills Skanderbeg Square before the 16 September Hague verdict

Tens of thousands of people packed central Pristina on Saturday to demand acquittal for former president Hashim Thaci and three other wartime commanders, four days before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague deliver verdicts. The march was called by the Kosovo Liberation Army War Veterans Association and by Freedom Has A Name, a group set up to speak for the detained leaders. Crowds carried red and black Albanian flags and portraits of Thaci, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi. Banners read “In the name of the people, declare them innocent,” “Liberators, bring them home,” and “Kosovo is waiting.” A large screen in the square has been counting down to Wednesday.

Prosecutors have asked for 45-year sentences. The indictment, filed in 2020, accuses the four of a campaign of murder, torture, enforced disappearance, unlawful detention and persecution of civilians during and just after the 1998-99 war with Serbian forces. That war killed about 13,000 people. Thaci resigned the presidency when the charges were confirmed. A second Hague case against him, for witness intimidation, is still running.

Inside Kosovo the four men are still treated as founders. Thaci read the independence declaration in 2008. Veterans’ leader Hysni Gucati told Saturday’s crowd that “Kosovo’s freedom was won through sacrifice” and that “no courtroom will be able to erase this truth.” He said only Serbia and Russia would gain from a guilty verdict. Fadil Gashi, who came by bus from Gjilan, put the local view in one line: coming to the square was the least people could do.

The Specialist Chambers exist because Kosovo’s own assembly created them under international pressure, with a seat in the Netherlands and a roster of foreign judges. Supporters of the court say that is the only way to try KLA crimes that domestic politics would never touch. Opponents say the court is a political instrument aimed at a guerrilla army that NATO supported from the air in 1999. Both arguments will be shouted again on 16 September. Neither will change the written judgment.

What the rally does change is the cost of the verdict at home. A guilty finding against Thaci will land in a capital that has already papered itself with his face and a clock. An acquittal will be read as proof that the street was right. A split verdict among the four would be the hardest to explain. President Vjosa Osmani was reported at the square by Albanian media. Prime Minister Albin Kurti was reported absent. That gap is the other Kosovo story: the wartime generation and the current government do not share a single line on the Hague.

Wednesday’s hearing ends more than five years of detention and argument. It does not end the second trial. Families of civilian victims of KLA units have had far less space in Pristina this week than the veterans. Their names are in the indictment. They will not be in the square when the clock hits zero.

The factual watch for 16 September is narrow. How many counts are upheld against each defendant? Does the trial chamber use the word “joint criminal enterprise” in the way prosecutors asked? And does Pristina stay on the street after the reading, or go home? Those three answers will tell whether Saturday was a farewell parade or the start of a longer fight over the founding story of the state.