Kosovo: trial of former president Hashim Thaçi and three other defendants accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity begins today

ROME – Starts today, in front of Specialized chambers of Kosovo, in The Hague, 24 years after the war, the trial of former Kosovo leader Hashim Thaçi and three other people, all high-ranking members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), accused of having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during and after the 1998-99 conflict. The KLA fought against Serbian and Yugoslav forces until a 78-day NATO air campaign forced those same forces out of Pristina. After the charges filed in November 2020, Thaçi resigned as president and was immediately transferred to The Hague along with the other defendants.

What are the “specialized chambers”. The Specialized Chambers of Kosovo and the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office were established following an international agreement ratified by the Assembly of Kosovo. They are temporary in nature with a specific mandate and jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, war crimes and other crimes under Kosovo law, committed or committed in Kosovo between 1 January 1998 and 31 December 2000, by or against citizens of Kosovo or the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The specialized chambers of Kosovo and the specialized prosecutor’s office are based in The Hague. Their staff is international, as are the judges, the specialist prosecutor and the registrar.

The indictments. Murders, enforced disappearances, torture, persecutions: four charges of war crimes and six of crimes against humanity are pending on the defendants. Prosecutor alleges that Thaçi together with Kadri Veseli, former head of KLA intelligence, Rexshep Selimi, head of KLA operational directorate, and Jakup Krasniqi, member of KLA political directorate, were part of a criminal organization whose goal was to control Kosovo through a system of intimidation, ill-treatment and violence against opponents. Victims of the defendants’ alleged crimes include Serbs, Roma and Albanians considered to be collaborators of Serbian forces or political opponents of the KLA.

The defence. In an interview with Balkan Insight, Thaçi’s defense lawyer Gregory Kehoe stressed that the four men are not war criminals, but Kosovo’s freedom fighters against Serbian oppression. And he added that, even if the crimes outlined had actually occurred, the four defendants could not in any case be held responsible because the UCK was a grassroots movement made up of teachers, merchants, farmers, students, therefore all untrained people and far from the configure an organized army, with a structured and vertical chain of command.

The court. The court that will try Thaçi and his probable collaborators was wanted by the European Union precisely to investigate the alleged crimes committed by the Albanian guerrilla in the three years from the end of 1998 to 2000. At the basis of the judicial institution, officially defined Kosovo Relocated Specialist Judicial Institution, there is the 2010 report by Swiss Senator Dick Marty, Rapporteur to the Council of Europe at the time. In the senator’s report, high-level KLA leaders are all accused of crimes committed during and after the conflict involving NATO and led to the bombing of Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, ISPI documents. The dossier speaks of murders, deportations, torture, rapes, deprivation of liberty but the most serious accusation was that which concerned the killing and organ harvesting from prisoners for profit. In the document, Thaçi is described as “the most dangerous of the KLA’s criminal bosses”.

The EU’s reaction. The European Union established a Special Investigative Task Forcewhich, after three years of investigation, in 2014 confirmed the validity of the allegations contained in the Marty report. The next intervention was the creation of the Court that will judge Thaçi, which obeys the Kosovar judicial system – it is not, therefore, an international Court – but is based in The Hague and is composed mainly of international judges. The choice of an extraterritorial court was dictated by the need to protect witnesses from pressure and threats.

The war lost. More than 1,600 people are missing since the Kosovo conflict, according to the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. More than 400 of these cases concern enforced disappearances that occurred after the war ended in June 1999, when NATO entered Pristina.

The opinion of Human Rights Watch. For the organisation, this process is important not only because it will finally serve to shed light on what happened in the Yugoslav wars at the end of the 1990s, but also because it can put Kosovo on the road to truth, justice, the rule of law .