The Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Wednesday found former President Hashim Tha\u00e7i criminally responsible for war crimes carried out during the 1998-1999 war with Serbia and sentenced him to 25 years in prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court said Tha\u00e7i was responsible for the crimes of arbitrary detention against 385 individuals, cruel treatment against 49 individuals, torture against 303 individuals and murder against 96 individuals as part of a joint criminal enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The verdicts, which are expected to be appealed by the defendants, have sparked outrage from Kosovo and Albanian leaders, and sparked scuffles outside The Hague between assembled supporters and Dutch police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tha\u00e7i, a former political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, was tried alongside Jakup Krasniqi, Rexhep Selimi and Kadri Veseli. The four men were charged with six counts of crimes against humanity and four war crimes charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The charges of crimes against humanity were dropped, while Krasniqi was sentenced to 25 years, Selimi to 13 years and Veseli to 18 years for the other offenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the judgment, the court found that the prosecution had failed to prove the existence of widespread and systematic attacks against civilians, a key element for crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following the ruling, Tha\u00e7i\u2019s brother Gani told the media that the family is convinced of his innocence and \u201cwe are waiting for the appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a social media post, Krasniqi\u2019s daughter Gresa called the ruling an \u201cunjust, political, racist, and criminal\u201d decision and claimed that many individuals responsible for war crimes against Kosovo Albanians remain free in Serbia today.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama called the ruling a \u201cshame.\u201d
Tha\u00e7i was indicted in November 2020 and resigned as president in the same month to face the proceedings. He has remained in detention in The Hague since then. \u201cI expect to be acquitted of every charge,\u201d Thaci said in a recent interview in August. The other defendants have all denied the charges against them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Wednesday found former President Hashim Tha\u00e7i criminally responsible for war crimes carried out during the 1998-1999 war with Serbia and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. The court said Tha\u00e7i was responsible for the crimes of arbitrary detention against 385 individuals, cruel treatment against 49 individuals, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36241,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36239\/revisions\/36241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}