Hashim Thaci, the former president of Kosovo who once led its guerrilla fight for independence from Serbia, was convicted of war crimes on Tuesday and sentenced to 25 years in prison by an international tribunal in The Hague.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a Hague-based court staffed by international judges but operating under Kosovo law, found Thaci guilty of murder as a war crime against 96 political opponents and suspected Serbian collaborators, along with the arbitrary detention of at least 385 people, torture of at least 303 and cruel treatment of roughly 49 others. Three of his former Kosovo Liberation Army comrades were convicted alongside him: ex-parliament speaker Jakup Krasniqi also got 25 years, former intelligence chief Kadri Veseli was sentenced to 18 years, and ex-lawmaker Rexhep Selimi received 13 years.

All four were acquitted on six counts of crimes against humanity, with judges ruling prosecutors failed to prove the acts were part of a widespread, systematic campaign against civilians, according to Al Jazeera's coverage of the verdict. Some acquittals turned on timing: Balkan Insight reported that alleged detention-camp abuses after the 1998-99 war formally ended fell outside the tribunal's mandate.

"Some detainees died"

Presiding Judge Charles Smith III told the courtroom that some detainees died because of severe beatings from their KLA captors, while stressing the panel's job was only to determine whether the specific charged crimes occurred — not to rule on the legitimacy of the KLA's broader war against Serbian forces, in which roughly 13,000 people died overall.

"SOME DETAINEES DIED BECAUSE OF SEVERE BEATINGS FROM THEIR KLA CAPTORS."

Thaci, 58, rose from KLA political director during the war to become Kosovo's prime minister and later its president, a post he resigned from in November 2020 after his indictment. He has consistently denied wrongdoing and is separately facing an obstruction-of-justice case over alleged witness tampering during the trial. Both the defendants and prosecutors — who had sought 45-year sentences — retain the right to appeal.

The ruling has landed as a political shock in a region still bitterly split over how the war is remembered. Serbia's deputy prime minister, Ivica Dacic, said a "fake state cannot be built on mass graves," while a Kosovo government minister called the verdict "terrible and harmful to Kosovo." Outside the courthouse, thousands of Thaci's supporters — who largely regard the KLA as liberators rather than war criminals — reacted with anger, and Balkan Insight reported brief scuffles broke out with Dutch police.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers was set up under international pressure after a 2011 Council of Europe report alleged organ trafficking and other atrocities by KLA figures, and it operates in the Netherlands specifically to shield witnesses from intimidation inside Kosovo. With appeals now expected from both sides, legal observers say the case could drag on for years, further complicating already fragile normalization talks between Pristina and Belgrade.