Her lips tremble as she speaks, her face turns pale, and the darkness in her eyes seems to deepen. Folding her hands clasped tightly on her lap, Sebahate Berisha, 52, struggles to contain her feelings as she speaks about the trials at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC), also called the Special Court by Kosovars. “The Special Court was like killing my children all over again,” she says to Justice Info, in her house in Hoqe e Madhe village in the municipality of Rahovec, in southern Kosovo.
“We, who lost our children during the war, continue to live with its consequences. So this court can’t be acceptable to us,” she says. “For us, the war never ended. It lives on within us. This court only deepens our pain, especially given that Serbia committed crimes in Kosovo. That is why NATO intervened. Despite what happens, nothing can bring our children back.”
More than 27 years have passed since Berisha lost all five of her children: it was in April 1999. The house where they had all sought shelter was struck during a Serbian military attack. Berisha was severely wounded. Two days after the strike, she regained consciousness in a hospital in Albania and realized that all five of her children, Adelina, 9 years old, Njomza, 7 years old, Shkurtesa, 5 years old, Lezie, 2 years old, and six-month-old Elhame, had been killed. Berisha’s sister, Zyrafete, endured the same tragedy: she lost her three children in the same attack.
Just a week earlier, NATO had launched its air campaign to halt the atrocities being committed against civilians by the forces of Slobodan Milošević, the then ruler of Serbia. Like thousands of other Kosovo Albanians, Berisha and her family had been displaced from their home and were searching for safety in another village, when the Serbs retaliated and they were hit.
Despite carrying the scars of one of the war’s most devastating personal losses, Berisha was never given the opportunity to testify about what happened to her family. No legal process was ever initiated to assess Serbian responsibility for this massacre or any other one perpetrated in Kosovo. No one has been held responsible, even though in the high chain of command of the Serbian government, police and army leaders were sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
“No sense of closure”
Now Berisha speaks ahead of the long-awaited verdict in the case against former Kosovo guerrilla leaders Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi. Their trial started in April 2023 and has seen 130-plus witnesses testifying over the course of 227 hearings. 155 victims are part in the case. But for this bereaved mother, whose children were killed by Serbian forces, this trial offers “no sense of closure”. “I can’t call it justice. They [Hasim Thaci and other Kosovar guerilla leaders] fought for the freedom that we paid such a high price to achieve,” she says.
To many victims such as Berisha, the KSC has remained a controversial institution, one that has struggled to earn the trust of those who suffered most during the war.Located in The Hague, the Netherlands, and staffed by international judges and prosecutors, the court was established by the Kosovo Assembly in August 2015.
Its creation followed a European Union (EU) investigation led to examine allegations made by Dick Marty in a 2010 report to the Council of Europe, which accused former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) members of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering prisoners during and after the 1999 war to harvest and traffic their organs.
Back then, on August 3rd, 2015, when Thaçi called for a vote on the hybrid court, he said that the court would remove “the dark cloud” hanging over Kosovo after Marty’s report. “It will prove that our fight for liberty was right and pure,” he said. Five years later, in 2020, he resigned as president of Kosovo to face accusations of war crimes.
“A geopolitical instrument for disciplining elites”
And more than a decade later, frustration with the court has been increasing in Kosovo, while it has significantly influenced and reshaped the country’s political landscape. The KSC is seen by many as attacking the victims of the conflict and the Liberation army rather than the Serbian oppressors. The war left 13,000 people dead, the majority of whom were Kosovo Albanians.
For Gezim Visoka, a Kosovo-born professor of peace and conflict studies in the School of law and government in Dublin, Ireland, “the KSC has been a geopolitical instrument for disciplining elites, balancing guilt, and focusing on the negative aspects of the Kosovo liberation war”. “And the process has become very lengthy, expensive, and controversial,” he tells Justice Info.
The court has faced longstanding challenges in the protection and relocation of witnesses and their families. So far, there have been three cases concerning attempts to influence witnesses before the KSC, involving 10 accused persons including Thaçi. While five people have already been sentenced, the trial for obstruction of justice of Hashim Thaçi, Hajredin Kuqi, Bashkim Smakaj, Isni Kilaj, and Fadil Fazliu is ongoing.
In September 2021, confidential court documents were leaked to leaders of the War Veterans Association, who then provided the material to the media. The leaked documents contained the names and personal details of witnesses. Following the leak, several witnesses and their families were relocated. “Those [obstruction of justice] cases demonstrate that relocation was an important step in keeping witnesses and victims safe,” Angela Griep, a spokesperson for the KSC, tells Justice Info.
Amer Alija, from the Pristina-based Humanitarian Law Centre, which monitors war crimes trials, says that the document leaks and cases of witness tampering have given the court reason to believe that there is a real risk of witness interference. “These cases were then repeatedly used as an argument for strict security measures and detention,” he says.
Defendants’ rights trampled on
The defendants have also continuously complained about their conditions of detention and alleged violations of their rights. “The illegal surveillance and access to the accused’s private discussions about his physical and mental health, and his most intimate exchanges with family was a violation of human rights,” said Luka Mišetić, the lawyer of Thaçi, in a statement. “No safeguards were put in place to ensure the integrity of the proceedings,” he added.
“To date, no trial panel has found that proceedings before the KSC have been unduly prolonged,” Griep replies.
Alexander Heinze, a professor of criminal law, criminal procedure, and international law at the University of Bremen, points out to Justice Info that the Court’s approach to the causation standard could serve as a textbook example. “Sentences in two cases were not bound by the law applicable in Kosovo at the time the crimes were committed,” he says. And “the length of proceedings is a concern.”
However, Heinze notes that concerns regarding justice and the legitimacy of the KSC stem primarily from the creation of the KSC itself.
Invisible witnesses and victims
The witness and victim protection measures have made it almost impossible for the public to know who they are, and to learn their stories. “It is hard to say whether this court has provided justice to a victim,” Visoka says. Heinze, however, points out that “a court that chooses the safety of witnesses at the cost of public accessibility is making a defensible choice”.
The KSC has only prosecuted Kosovars for crimes allegedly committed during and after the war in Kosovo, between February 1998 and December 2000. Due to its de facto monoethnic mandate, the media in Kosovo have mostly spoken of the court with a voice of frustration and disbelief.
For some journalists such as Xhorxhina Bami, who has consistently reported on the trials for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), the court’s visibility has been low because so much of its work has been conducted behind closed doors. “Most hearings are closed, their transcripts are published weeks later, and they are often heavily redacted,” she says.
A large part of the evidence, especially in the war crimes case against Thaçi and others, has been redacted. The court has also received files from Serbia, which have never been disclosed neither. “The lack of transparency has reached very high levels,” Bami adds.
Griep says the sheer amount of reporting on KSC cases, based on public hearings and public filings is actually “a testament to this transparency”. And to her, “the biggest obstacle in providing people in Kosovo with accurate information has been misinformation circulating in some media.”
No sympathy for the victims?
Now, 27 years after the war, most of the victims have not yet received any compensation because the accused do not have the means to pay, while the law does not provide any compensation for the victims: the KSC has no compensation trust fund, and the Kosovo government has legally no obligation to pay the reparations orders.
Victims’ counsel Simon Laws, highlights the harm suffered by participating victims. “Some lost their lives, while others were deprived of their liberty,” he said. “The severe mistreatment suffered by the 155 victims remains evident, and many continue to experience psychological consequences to this day.”
Some victims also find little solace in testifying. “My family and I continue to live stigmatized lives for something we did not do,” a victim who wishes to remain anonymous, told Justice Info.
As for Berisha, she has lost hope for justice for her children and sees it all as an unfair process. “I have been living with the hope of testifying for my children. But that day has never come,” she says.
Visoka says the Chambers’ non-transparent handling of victims has further stigmatized them. “The Kosovar public has not become more sympathetic toward the victims,” he adds.
Moreover, there have been many questions about the motivations and backgrounds of some witnesses and victims, including evidence supplied by Serbian state structures, which has called into question their credibility and legitimacy.
Significant skepticism also remains as to whether the KSC has contributed either to deliver justice for victims or to promote ethnic coexistence. In recent years, there has been a growing number of in absentia trials in Kosovar courts to judge Serbian militaries and police commanders allegedly involved in war crimes in Kosovo during the 1999 war. “The KSC has indirectly played a role in accelerating war crimes trials in Kosovo [with Kosovar courts acting] as a counter-response to the KSC,” Visoka said.
The missing legitimacy of an imposed institution
In Serbia, people have generally been indifferent to this hybrid court, showing little interest in its work. And for many in Kosovo, the court is seen as a concession to Serbia by Kosovo’’s allies at the country’s expense.
For Sonja Biserko, a human rights activist and president of the Helsinki Committee for human rights in Serbia, the KSC’s creation was a major victory for the Serbian state narrative. “With Russian support, Serbia has instrumentalized the KSC in its campaign against Kosovo as a sovereign state,” she says.
Agon Maliqi, a political analyst in Kosovo, points out that the court has not achieved its objective of gaining legitimacy in the eyes of public in Kosovo. “The way the indictment was constructed by the prosecution, targeting the guerrilla command, casts the liberation war in a criminal light,” he tells Justice Info. “The court is seen as an international attempt to do a favour to Serbia in its efforts to draw the country closer to the West,” he adds. “The KSC has strengthened the argument that Kosovo should doubt the sincerity and trustworthiness of its international allies.”
The verdict of the trial of former Kosovo guerrilla leaders, including Thaçi, is now expected on September 16th, 2026.
