Hashim Thaci and three different ethnic Albanian separatist leaders face an EU tribunal in The Hague
Kosovo Liberation Army chief Hashim Thaci pleaded not responsible on Monday earlier than the EU-funded particular tribunal in The Hague. Thaci and three different KLA leaders have been charged with war crimes and crimes towards humanity for their actions through the 1998-99 insurgency towards Serbia, which NATO finally launched an air war to assist.
Prosecutors of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers Court charged Thaci, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi, and former KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi with homicide, torture, pressured disappearances, persecution and merciless remedy of ethnic Albanians, Roma and Serbs, for the aim of gaining management over your entire province.
“Why did they do it? The evidence will show that it was to gain power,” stated prosecutor Alex Whiting, including that the KLA had a “clear and explicit policy to target collaborators and perceived traitors, including political opponents.”
In addition to need for energy, the defendants have been motivated by “fear” that their trigger is likely to be defeated and “hatred” of Serbs after clashes with the Yugoslav army and police, the prosecutors argued.
The indictment alleges that a minimum of 407 folks have been kidnapped and extrajudicially imprisoned, and a minimum of 100 of them have been murdered, between January 1, 1998 and December 31, 2000. NATO launched a 78-day air war on behalf of the KLA in March 1999.
“I’m fully not guilty,” Thaci, 54, advised the tribunal, repeating his plea from 2020 when he was detained. The others pleaded not responsible as properly.
Thaci went from being a KLA commander referred to as ‘Snake’ to the chief of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) and the primary prime minister of the self-proclaimed impartial authorities in 2008. He grew to become president in 2016, however stepped down after the indictment. Serbia doesn’t acknowledge the breakaway province’s declaration of independence.
In 2010, a Council of Europe investigation linked Thaci to organized crime, together with the commerce of human organs forcibly harvested from KLA captives. When the UN tribunal’s case towards different KLA leaders fell aside because of witness intimidation and homicide, the Specialist Chambers was arrange in 2015.
Thousands of ethnic Albanians rallied in Kosovo over the weekend to protest the trial, and a number of other dozen protested outdoors the courtroom within the Netherlands as properly. Albania’s prime minister, Edi Rama, tweeted in assist of Thaci, noting that he was “once hailed as the George Washington of Kosovo by Joe Biden himself!” The present US president was a senator on the time, and strongly supported the NATO war.
The German ambassador in Pristina additionally supported the courtroom, tweeting: “It is not the KLA which is on trial… but individuals who are accused of i.e. grave war crimes.” However, the indictment particularly expenses Thaci and others with being half of a “joint criminal enterprise” to take over Kosovo. That authorized doctrine, devised by an American lawyer, was first utilized by the ad-hoc tribunal for the previous Yugoslavia within the Nineties, to go after the Serb army and political management.
