Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci pleaded not guilty to 10 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity at a trial in a special court in The Hague on Monday. Thaci and three co-defendants, who are all leaders of the KLA guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army, pleaded not guilty to the charges of persecution, murder, torture, and forced disappearance of people that stem from the 1998-99 insurgency that eventually brought independence from Serbia. The trial began with opening statements by the prosecution, followed by defense lawyers and a representative of Kosovo’s war Victims Council over the ensuing three days. The four defendants are charged with participating in a ‘joint criminal enterprise that carried out widespread or systematic attacks’ on KLA opponents.
Prosecutors said that during the insurgency, over 13,000 people, mostly members of Kosovo’s 90% ethnic Albanian majority, are believed to have died. The defendants targeted political opponents, ethnic Serbs, and Roma during and just after the conflict. Prosecutors said that hundreds of detainees were held across Kosovo in terrible conditions, and over 100 were murdered, most of whom were Kosovo Albanians. The trial is likely to be lengthy, as prosecutors said they would need two years to present their evidence.
The trial took place in The Hague, where protesters rallied outside in support of Thaci. Thaci resigned as president shortly after his indictment in 2020 and was transferred to detention in The Hague. During his time as a KLA leader and a prominent politician, Thaci worked closely with many Western leaders. The trial began two weeks after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the alleged crime of deporting Ukrainian children. The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, seated in the Netherlands and staffed by international judges and lawyers, was set up in 2015 to handle cases under Kosovo law against ex-KLA guerrillas.
Many Kosovars believe that the tribunal is biased against the KLA and interested in denigrating its record in paving the way to liberation of the ethnic-Albanian majority region from repressive Serbian rule. The court was created separately from the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which also held in The Hague, tried and convicted mainly Serbian officials for war crimes in the Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo conflicts. Joe Biden, when he was U.S. vice president, called Thaci ‘the George Washington of Kosovo,’ and Thaci was en route to a meeting at Donald Trump’s White House when his indictment was announced.
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