The war crimes trial of former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci begins Monday at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, Netherlands.
Thaci, who was commander-in-chief of the ethnic Albanian rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and three other former KLA heads, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi, are charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the 1998 armed conflict -1999 against the Serb forces.
After the war, Thaci, whose cover name was “Snake” because they evaded the Serbian police, and the three co-defendants took prominent positions in the government.
He was president from 2016 until his resignation in 2020 following his indictment.
Veseli and Krasniqi were former presidents of the Kosovo Assembly, while former MP Selimi was a founding member of Thaci’s Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK.
The four suspects were transferred to The Hague after their charges were confirmed in November 2020. They have all pleaded not guilty on all counts.
Thaci has been in pre-trial detention for more than two years.
According to the indictment, the four defendants were charged with ten charges between at least March 1998 and September 1999: persecution, imprisonment, illegal or arbitrary arrest and detention, other inhumane acts, cruel treatment, torture, murder and enforced disappearance of persons.
By taking part in a joint criminal enterprise, the accused sought to control “all of Kosovo through, among other things, unlawful intimidation, beatings, assault and removal of those deemed to be opponents,” it said.
Such opponents included alleged collaborators of Serbian armed forces, as well as officials, state institutions and those who did not support the KLA’s aims, including Democratic League of Kosovo collaborators, Serbs, Roma and other ethnicities.
The indictment alleged that KLA members in Kosovo and northern Albania committed crimes against hundreds of people who did not take part in the hostilities.
“[The crimes] were part of a widespread and systematic attack against individuals suspected of being opponents of the KLA,” the indictment said.
Serbian treatment of the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo led to the rebellious KLA, which was founded in the early 1990s. Violence intensified in 1998-1999 when the KLA fought for independence against Belgrade forces led by President Slobodan Milosevic.
The war ended in 1999 when NATO bombed Belgrade to stop the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo by Serb forces. More than 10,000 people died in the war. According to Human Rights Watch, the NATO bombing killed about 500 civilians.
Kosovo later declared independence from Serbia in 2008, which Belgrade refused to recognize.
Journalist Xhemajl Rexha told Kosovo’s Al Jazeera that the country was “pressured by its allies, mainly the US, to set up the specialized courts in 2015 following a Council of Europe report on alleged ‘organ trafficking’ by the KLA in Albania during the war with Serbia.
“These allegations never made it to the indictment against the ‘Big Four’, and there is a sense of anger in Kosovo, with many thinking the Court is biased and will only deal with alleged crimes committed by the KLA, not the Serbian military and the police, which resulted in more than 10,000 ethnic Albanian deaths and a million refugees,” Rexha said.
He added that it is “very likely” that Thaci, Veseli, Krasniqi and Selimi will be acquitted, if not at first instance, then on appeal.
“It would be very difficult for the prosecution to link their actions or lack thereof to the alleged killings and torture on the ground, as the KLA is considered a guerrilla with a chain of command not well established.
“Former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj and former Deputy Prime Minister Fatmir Limaj were acquitted by the ICTY [International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia] at similar costs a few years ago,” he said.
Bekim Blakaj, executive director of the Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo, said that during the trial, most of the witnesses proposed by the prosecution are closed to the public to protect them.
“It is very difficult to generate sympathy for victims if they do not hear [their] stories,” Blakaj told Al Jazeera.
“The public in Kosovo does not support this court because they see it as a politically motivated court – a court [that] only try one side, because the vast majority of crimes committed in Kosovo were committed by Serb forces against Albanians, and there are almost no substantive trials against them,” Blakaj said.
“We do ask for justice for victims, recognize all victims; this is the most important message.”
Jelena Sesar, Amnesty International’s Balkans researcher, told Al Jazeera the indictment is important because “it focuses on Mr Thaci and the KLA leadership’s responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, rather than handling isolated incidents”.
“Previous attempts to investigate the KLA have faced obstruction of justice, including intimidation of potential witnesses and threats to prosecutors and judges,” Sesar said.
“The failure to properly investigate the crimes committed between 1998 and 1999 is a blot on the record of the ICTY and the fact that war crimes suspects continued to live free and occupy high positions in government only created a widespread sense of impunity. .”