Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday after being convicted of four counts of war crimes committed during Kosovo’s 1998-99 war for independence from Serbia.
Judges at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague found Thaci, 58, guilty of murder, torture, cruel treatment and arbitrary detention. Thaci, who resigned as Kosovo’s president nearly six years ago to face the charges, stood silently as Presiding Judge Charles Smith delivered the verdict and sentence.
Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci
(Photo: AP)
The case centered on crimes committed while Thaci was a senior figure in the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force that fought Serbian troops. He was tried alongside three other former KLA leaders, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi, all of whom denied the charges. Prosecutors accused them of targeting political opponents and civilians they regarded as collaborators or traitors and had sought sentences of up to 45 years.
The trial was closely followed in Kosovo, where Thaci and the other defendants are still regarded by many as national heroes. Thousands of supporters rallied in Pristina ahead of the verdict, carrying Albanian flags and portraits of the four men.
“Throughout my life, I stood with the people of Kosovo defending freedom, life and dignity. I was always guided by the Western ideals of democracy, equality and justice,” Thaci told the judges in February at the end of the nearly three-year trial.
The EU-backed court is based in The Hague and staffed largely by international personnel because of concerns over witness intimidation and security. Thaci also faces a separate trial on witness intimidation charges due to begin later this month.
Thaci rose from the KLA’s political leadership to become one of the dominant figures in postwar Kosovo politics and later served as president. The war left about 13,000 people dead, most of them ethnic Albanians, and drove roughly 1 million ethnic Albanian Kosovars from their homes before a 78-day NATO bombing campaign ended the fighting.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but Belgrade still refuses to recognize it. Relations between the two remain tense despite years of EU-mediated negotiations backed by the United States.