\n A war crimes court in The Hague jailed two Kosovo former separatist fighters to four-and-a-half years on Wednesday for intimidating witnesses, in its first verdict over Kosovo's 1990s independence war from Serbia.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hysni Gucati and Nasim Haradinaj, the head and the deputy head of a group of veterans from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), were found guilty of revealing the details of hundreds of witnesses after receiving classified files from the court.\n<\/p>\n
\n The two men, who were arrested in September 2022, called witnesses \"traitors, spies and collaborators\" in a bid to scare them off testifying to the Netherlands-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers, the court found.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"This judgment clearly paints those acts for what they are: criminal and not patriotic,\" presiding judge Charles Smith said as he handed down the sentences at the high-security court.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The message of the accused to these witnesses was: now that everyone knows who you are, no one can protect you.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The time the men have already served in detention since their arrest will be deducted from the sentence, Smith said. They were also fined 100 euros each.\n<\/p>\n
\n Gucati and Haradinaj, who had denied the charges, listened to the judgment through headphones and stood to be sentenced.\n<\/p>\n
\n They were found guilty on five counts including intimidating witnesses and violating the secrecy of the court and cleared of one charge of \"retaliation\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The Kosovo Specialist Chambers operates under Kosovo law but is based in the Netherlands to shield witnesses from intimidation in Kosovo, where former KLA commanders have long dominated political life.\n<\/p>\n
\n The court has issued war crimes charges against several senior members of the KLA, an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group that waged a 1998-99 independence struggle against Serbia.\n<\/p>\n
\n They include Kosovo's former president Hashim Thaci, who resigned after being indicted.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Traitors, spies, collaborators' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Gucati and Haradinaj were arrested by heavily armed EU police in a raid on the veterans' headquarters Pristina in September 2020 and sent to The Hague for trial.\n<\/p>\n
\n The veterans' association said it had received anonymous packages of the court's confidential files including information about protected witnesses and upcoming indictments.\n<\/p>\n
\n Judges said Gucati and Haradinaj received three batches of classified information from the court and revealed them during three press conferences between September 7 and 25, 2020.\n<\/p>\n
\n They also handed out the information to journalists and gave interviews, the judges said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"These acts took place in a climate of witness intimidation,\" judge Smith said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The accused referred to witnesses and potential witnesses using derogatory and threatening language, calling them traitors, spies, collaborators.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The court is investigating claims that the Kosovo rebels waged a campaign of revenge attacks on Serbs, Roma and ethnic Albanian rivals during and after the war.\n<\/p>\n
\n Thaci -- the rebels' former political chief -- was accused by prosecutors of being \"criminally responsible for nearly 100 murders\".\n<\/p>\n
\n He pleaded not guilty when he appeared in court in November 2020.\n<\/p>\n
\n Another former commander, Salih Mustafa, compared the court to Nazi Germany's Gestapo secret police when he appeared in the dock in September last year.\n<\/p>\n
\n Many KLA veterans fiercely oppose the tribunal's mandate, defending their \"just\" liberation war against Belgrade's oppression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population.\n<\/p>\n
\n The conflict left 13,000 people dead, mainly ethnic Albanians, and saw several top Serbian politicians and generals later jailed for war crimes.\n<\/p>\n
\n Tensions between Belgrade and Pristina have remained high.\n<\/p>\n
\n Serbia as well as its powerful allies China and Russia still do not recognise Kosovo's 2008 independence declaration, which has been recognised by more than 100 countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A war crimes court in The Hague jailed two Kosovo former separatist fighters to four-and-a-half years on Wednesday for intimidating witnesses, in its first verdict over Kosovo's 1990s independence war from Serbia. Hysni Gucati and Nasim Haradinaj, the head and the deputy head of a group of veterans from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-92380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n