Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci sentenced to 25 years for war crimes

The Kosovo war crimes tribunal has convicted former Kosovar President Hashim Thaci of four counts of war crimes committed during his country’s war for independence from Serbia.

Thaci, 58, was sentenced on Wednesday to 25 years in prison for ‌crimes, including murder, torture and illegal detention, committed as top commander of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the ⁠territory’s violent break ⁠from Serbia in the 1990s.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) in The Hague, Netherlands, said he was ⁠guilty of the murder ⁠of 96 political ⁠opponents and perceived collaborators with Serbian security forces by the KLA during the conflict.

Thaci denied all the charges.

Wearing a suit and tie, he stood in silence as Presiding Judge Charles Smith read out the sentence.

Three former KLA senior commanders were also sentenced for several different charges.

Jakup Krasniqi was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Kadri Veseli was given 18 years, including the time he spent in custody, and Rexhep Selimi was sentenced to 13 years, including the time spent in custody.

The verdict stated that they would have the right to appeal.

The four men were acquitted on six charges of crimes against humanity because the judges said the prosecutors failed to prove that crimes were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians.

‘Harmful to Kosovo’

The trial has been controversial within Kosovo as many Kosovan Albanians see the KLA and Thaci as revered figures because of their role in the 1998-99 independence war.

Kosovo’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Glauk Konjufca condemned the verdict as “terrible and harmful to Kosovo”.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama reacted on social media to the verdict by releasing an illustration of The Hague with the Albanian word, “Marre”, which translates to “shame” or “disgrace”.

In Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, thousands of people watched the reading of the verdict live on a huge screen and were stunned at the sentence. Some started shouting slogans in support of the KLA and Thaci.

Serbia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Ivica Dacic called the verdicts a “warning” to Pristina “that a fake state cannot be built on mass graves of murdered Serbs”.

He said that the conviction represents a “clear, and albeit belated, confirmation of what Serbia and the Serbian people have been saying loudly for more than a quarter of a century – that the so-called KLA was a criminal and terrorist organisation”.

The KLA first emerged in the mid 1990s, but its armed operations intensified in 1997 and 1998.

Serbian forces responded with several large police and military operations, leading to a full-blown war in 1999, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated of 13,000 people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands.

During the war, Thaci was one of the heads of the KLA’s political and information directorate. Once the war ended, he became Kosovo’s prime minister and foreign minister and then served as president from 2016 to 2020.

Thaci resigned in November 2020, after he was indicted by the tribunal. He and the other convicted commanders were transferred to detention in The Hague in November of that year.

Reporting from The Hague, Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego said the verdicts come as Kosovo is facing “political deadlock”.

“There have been repeated elections to try and get some form of stable government so they can get some kind of closer relationship with the European Union going, but there have been repeated blocks to that, and failures to form that government,” she said.

“This is just going to be another stumbling block on that path to stability.”

Gallego also said the verdict “cuts right to the bone” for many Kosovar Albanians, who view Thaci as a heroic figure.

“Closure is not in the immediate future. There has already been a very angry response in Pristina from thousands of Kosovar Albanians there about this judgement,” she explained.

“It cannot be understated really how abject a decision this is for Kosovar Albanians who see Hashem Thaci as not just the country’s former president, but also a symbol of Kosovo’s liberation.”

“Not all crimes seem to be treated equally by the courts” said Jeta Xharra, the director of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Kosovo, who told Al Jazeera that the day marked more injustice for the Albanian majority of Kosovo.

“Serbian forces were involved in the killing of over 10,000 civilians, many of them women and children, yet majority members of the Serbian forces have not been held accountable for these crimes. And today, we see very lengthy sentences handed down to four members of the KLA,” she said.

Xharra said that people in Kosovo could not forget the terror they had experienced before the war, when they were treated as second-class citizens simply because they belonged to a different ethnic group.

“This court was seen as a court trying one ethnicity only, Kosovo Albanians. While that is not how the war was in Kosovo, majority of the crimes were committed by Serbian forces. Of course, all victims must get justice but this particular court is making sure that one side only is being tried”, she told Al Jazeera.