The guilt of its former president, Hashim Thaci, and his sentence to 45 years in prison for working with the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), was requested by his criminal prosecution.
The bloody legacy of the UCK is on trial
Thaci and three other former KLA commanders are accused of persecution, killings, torture and disappearances during and immediately after the 1998-1999 uprising that eventually led to the independence of the Albanian-majority region from Serbia.
“The defendants committed crimes against what they considered to be their opponents in order to take control of Kosovo,” prosecutor Kimberly West told The Hague court. He added that in 1998 and 1999, more than 100 political opponents and people considered to be collaborators of the Serbian security forces were killed, while hundreds were abused in about 50 detention centers operated by the KLA.
“The case is about the goal of the four defendants to gain and exercise complete control over the whole of Kosovo,” West said near the end of the nearly three-year trial at the Hague-based special war crimes tribunal for Kosovo.
Thaci himself declares himself innocent
Thaci, 57, who served as prime minister, foreign minister and president of independent Kosovo from 2008-2020, and his co-accused, deny all charges.
His defense lawyers, who are expected to appear on Wednesday, have argued that Thaci had no real authority over the KLA and its military commanders during and after the uprising, but was forced to comply with the decisions of local commanders.
However, the prosecution stressed that it had overwhelming evidence that the four defendants were key members of the KLA central staff and those issuing orders to the commanders — and not the other way around.
Prosecutors: The KLA targeted political opponents, Serbs and Roma
According to the prosecution, Thaci and other KLA leaders waged a violent campaign against political opponents, as well as members of the Serb and Roma ethnic minorities, with the aim of gaining complete control of Kosovo.
However, the majority of the victims of the persecution were members of Kosovo’s Albanian majority, which accounts for about 90% of the population, according to the prosecution.
The Special Court for Kosovo, staffed by international judges and prosecutors, was established in 2015 to try war crimes cases under Kosovo law against former KLA members.
The court is based outside Kosovo due to concerns about witness intimidation, as many former KLA leaders are seen in Kosovo as heroes of the national liberation struggle.
Despite this, prosecutors said the trial was conducted in a “pervasive climate of witness intimidation.” Thaci and four other defendants face a separate trial for obstruction of justice, which is scheduled to begin on February 27.
More than 13,000 people, mostly Kosovo Albanians, are estimated to have died during the armed conflict in the late 1990s, when Kosovo was still a province of Serbia under then-president Slobodan Milosevic.
