Kosovo’s former leader is sentenced to 25 years in war crimes case

By AMELIA NIERENBERG

Hashim Thaci, the former leader of Kosovo who led its bloody independence fight against Serbia in the 1990s, was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison for war crimes, including arbitrary detention, torture and murder.

Thaci’s sentence concluded a trial that has deepened divisions in his Balkan homeland over whether he should be feted as a war hero or condemned as a leader of violent rebels.

Thaci, 58, who has long denied wrongdoing, was sentenced along with three other senior members of the since-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA. A special tribunal in The Hague, known as the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, handed down the judgments.

During the conflict in the 1990s, the four men “contributed significantly” to the targeting of perceived opponents, the tribunal said in a statement. Some of the victims were fellow Kosovo Albanians perceived as collaborators or traitors. Others were members of ethnic minorities, the tribunal said.

“The targeting of such opponents took the form of killings; arrests and detention without due process; physical and psychological mistreatment; as well as other forms of abuse, intimidation and harassment,” the tribunal said.

In most cases, the tribunal found no evidence that the men’s victims “had engaged in any criminal activity, taken an active part in hostilities or presented any other legitimate security concern” for the KLA.

“The vast majority of them were innocent civilians,” the tribunal said.

For years, the case has divided Kosovo, a tiny country that has long been one of the poorest parts of the former Yugoslavia.

Thaci, long a towering figure in Kosovo, has led the country as both its prime minister and its president. In June 2020, when he was still serving as president, the news of his indictment took him by surprise: He was in Vienna, on his way to the White House for peace talks with Serbia.

That November, he resigned and surrendered to the tribunal in The Hague. He was in detention there through the trial, which started in 2023.