One of the most important trials for the Kosovo war began this Monday in The Hague. In the defendant’s dock of the Special Court for Kosovo has sat down Hashim Thacialso know as the snake during his days in arms, former prime minister and former president of Kosovo, but above all former guerrilla leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK, for its acronym in Kosovar). The prosecution presents him as a bloodthirsty who is guilty of war crimes. He denies it.
The list of charges against Thaci is impressive. The Kosovar politician is criminally accused of four war crimes and six crimes against humanityincluding torture, cruel treatment, inhumane acts, persecution, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and the murder of one hundred people among at least March 1998 and late 1999. Together with Thaci, they also face the trial – whose hearings will possibly continue all year -, other important figures of politics in Kosovosuch as Kadri Veseli, former president of the Kosovar Parliament, Jakup Krasniqi, president of the National Council of the Social Democratic Initiative party and Rexhep Selimi, head of the opposition parliamentary group Vetevendosje, the party that currently governs Kosovo.
“These four men were without a doubt the top leadership of the UCK and they were celebrated and honored for it,” said prosecutor Alex Whiting. “But his leadership had a darker side,” he said. “I am not guilty at all,” replied Thaçi, who came to the appointment dressed in a gray suit and a blue tie.
The events date back to the bloodiest period of the Kosovar conflict, triggered by the dissolution of Yugoslavia and which developed into a major ethnic confrontation between Serbs and Kosovar Albanians. The period, in fact, coincides with the increase in UÇK attacks against the Serbian army deployed in Kosovo and also the bombing of Belgrade by NATO, an attack that divided Western societies but ultimately halted harsh reprisals by Serb forces against the Kosovo Albanian community in Kosovo. Thaci was formally charged in 2020 and a latest version of his incriminating order was drawn up last February.
civilian casualties
According to the prosecution, the crimes were committed in several places in Kosovo, as well as in Kukës and Cahan, in northern Albania. Specifically, the order alleges that Thaçi, Veseli, Selimi and Krasniqi are allegedly responsible for attacks against “hundreds of civilians and people who were not part of the hostilities”, as recalled by the prosecution. The three “were part of a widespread and systematic attack against persons suspected of opposing the UÇK”, it has been added.
Some 140 witnesses have been admitted to testify during the process, which includes victims and also relatives of people who have died. Many of them have already been heard with a special protection regime, for security reasons. On his part, since 2020, Thaci has been awaiting this trial in a jail in The Hague.
years to trial
The most important trial so far held by the Special Court for Kosovo, a body that started working in 2017, also begins between controversies. The latter come from some Kosovo non-governmental organizations that have complained that there are no Serb defendants among the defendants in the four ongoing trials in The Hague. So much so that the first war crimes sentence, handed down in December, was against Salih Mustafa, a former UÇK commander.
The first to raise suspicions about Thaci was the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Charles of the Bridge, which in a 2008 book released internal information from the UN mission in Kosovo (Unmik) that spoke of crimes committed by the UÇK. Thaci repeatedly denied them, including in a interview with EL PERIÓDICO, from the Prensa Ibérica group, in 2014.