Kosovo ex-president denies guilt as war crimes trial starts

Former Kosovo president Hashim Thaci led a violent campaign of murder and torture against opponents during the 1998-1999 independence war with Serbia, prosecutors told the start of his war crimes trial on Monday. 

Thaci and three other leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rebel group all pleaded not guilty to crimes against humanity and war crimes as the trial got underway at a special tribunal in The Hague.

Protesters rallied in The Hague to support Thaci, who resigned in 2020 and has been detained by the court ever since, while thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Pristina on the eve of the trial.

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Thaci is widely seen as a guerilla hero in Kosovo, but prosecutors said he openly oversaw a brutal reign of violence as the ethnic Albanian KLA tried to tighten their grip on the during and after the war.

“Why did they do it? The evidence will show that it was to gain power,” prosecutor Alex Whiting told the EU-funded Kosovo Specialist Chambers Court.

“We intend to prove hundreds of detentions across Kosovo, usually under terrible conditions of abuse, and over 100 murders.”

The Kosovo war, the last of the 1990s conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia, claimed some 13,000 lives. It ended after a NATO bombing campaign forced Serb forces to withdraw.

– ‘Darker side’ –

Thaci, wearing a blue tie and charcoal grey suit and listening through headphones, confirmed the plea he entered when he first appeared before the court in 2020.

“I’m fully not guilty,” the 54-year-old Thaci told the tribunal.

His fellow defendants, former KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi, Thaci’s closest political ally Kadri Veseli and key KLA figure Rexhep Selimi, also denied the charges.

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Dubbed the “George Washington of Kosovo” by then-US vice president Joe Biden, Thaci was the young nation’s first prime minister and president after it declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

But he has long been dogged by allegations of crimes during and after the war, along with accusations of corruption in a country where KLA commanders retain a key role in public life.

“These four men were without any doubt the principal leaders of the KLA and they have been celebrated and honoured for it,” Whiting told the court.

“But there was a darker side to their leadership.”

The KLA leaders had in fact for years had a  “clear and explicit policy to target collaborators and perceived traitors, including political opponents.”

– Kosovo Albanians the victims –

Most of the victims were fellow Kosovo Albanians, while Serbs and ethnic Roma were also killed. 

“In their zeal to target and eliminate those persons they deemed to be opponents the accused… also victimised their own,” said Whiting.

The KLA’s methods were “not a secret at all” but were publicly endorsed by the group in a “drumbeat that said political opponents posed an existential threat.”

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But as well as the drive for power, the four defendants’ motives also included “fear” that their independence cause could lose and “hatred” after attacks by the enemy, the prosecutor said. 

The men each face six counts of crimes against humanity and four counts of war crimes, including murder, torture, forced disappearances, persecution and cruel treatment. 

Prosecutors said that to this day there was a “climate of witness intimidation surrounding this trial” with witnesses facing threats to their safety.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers was set up in 2015 after a 2010 Council of Europe report linked Thaci to organised crime during and after the war.

The high-security court operates under Kosovo law but is based in the Netherlands to shield witnesses from intimidation in Kosovo.

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International tensions remain over Kosovo, which has been recognised by many Western countries but not by Belgrade or Moscow.