On Monday, February 9, the prosecution started its closing statements in the trial for Hashim Thaçi and three other former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), almost three years after the start of the trial. The prosecutor of Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague demanded a 45-year sentence for each of the accused.
Looking straight across the courtroom to the four men, Specialist Prosecutor Kimberly West requested convictions on all 10 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, based on their “individual contributions” to these crimes, which are “grave in nature”.
Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi’s charges include persecution, illegal detention, torture and murder. They were all high-ranking figures of the KLA who went on to become prominent Kosovo politicians. Thaçi served as prime minister, foreign minister and president of independent Kosovo between 2008 and 2020, when he resigned to defend himself before the Court. According to the prosecution, the KLA had a well-structured chain of command, and the accused bear individual and command responsibility for the charges, which also cover the murders of more than 100 people and the abuse of hundreds more in around 50 KLA detention camps in Kosovo and northern Albania from at least March 1998 through September 1999. The alleged crimes are in the context of the 1998-99 ethnic Albanian war for independence from Serbia, which ruled over Kosovo. A 78-day campaign of NATO airstrikes against Serbian forces ended the fighting.
The Specialist Chambers have been criticised by ethnic Albanians who see the court as ethnically biased and seeking to equalise what the KLA did in what they see as a just war with the crimes committed by the Serbs. Most of the 13,000 people who died in the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo were ethnic Albanians, and another million were driven from their homes. According to current Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, the sentence requested by the prosecution was detaching individual actions from the context of a defensive war. “A conviction and sentence are not sought against the general staff nor against the KLA”, said West.
All four accused have pleaded not guilty to all charges. In the defence case, presented in the autumn of 2025, 7 defence witnesses working in and around Kosovo in the late 90s said that the KLA was not a well-structured group with a functioning chain of command and that Thaçi was not directly responsible for the crimes.
A pervasive climate of intimidation
Around 40 people filled the public gallery on the first day of hearings. Besides the Kosovo Ambassador, other embassy officials, and some Kosovo and international media, the majority were family members and friends of the four accused. Thaçi and Selimi saluted them with the usual smile as they entered the courtroom, walking with their back straight.
“Unfortunately, this trial did not escape the long-standing and pervasive climate of intimidation that had been forecasted from the start”, said West in her opening remarks. The Kosovo Court was set up in 2015 by the Kosovo parliament under pressure from the country's western allies to handle ex-KLA fighters. The Chambers are formally part of the Kosovo judicial system, but are located in the Netherlands and are fully staffed by internationals. The Chambers were specifically set outside of Kosovo because of worries over witness protection, which had been an issue at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The court has nevertheless seen several proceedings of former KLA members found guilty of intimidating witnesses, and a new trial for Thaçi and others taking place at the end of February will also discuss that matter.
“Despite fears, threats, and stigma being forced upon witnesses and their families”, said West, “these witnesses have so yearned for the truth to come out that they nonetheless chose to cooperate with my office and give evidence to this court.”
Punishing perceived opponents
The prosecutor disregarded the evidence that came from the international defence witnesses, as they “parachuted into a situation with little background knowledge of the players involved, did not speak the language, interacted face to face with key players only a handful of times, hardly ever saw any KLA rules, regulations, orders or communiques, and were not familiar with the KLA structure”. Thaçi raised his eyebrows while taking notes, then smirked.
“This case is about the four accused's goal to gain and exercise control over all of Kosovo”, stated West, saying that in order to achieve their aim, they “committed crimes against their perceived opponents”. The prosecution rejected the defence argument that the KLA was just a collection of autonomous units and that the crimes cannot be attributed to the accused. West said there is “overwhelming evidence” that the accused were key members of the KLA general staff and gave orders to the zone commanders on the ground, who were responsible for detaining and mistreating people.
Taking the floor next, prosecutor Alan Tieger argued that decisions within the KLA were made collectively and that applied to how to deal with collaborators. “General or central staff communiques over the next three to four years disseminated a consistent message”, said Tieger. He said the KLA wanted the independence of Kosovo and control over the area, and saw parties that were in favour of autonomy as traitors. “Occupiers' collaborators would be dealt with mercilessly”, he said. Tieger cited the ICTY testimony of Sokol Bashota, a KLA leader, who said that collaborators were given a warning, and if they failed to stop, punitive measures were taken: “In most cases, decisions were made to kill them.”
In November 1998, Thaçi and another KLA member met with representatives of Human Rights Watch to discuss the detention of two Serbian journalists, said prosecutor Clare Lawson. The accused told the organisation that the detainees could not be released because they had been tried and were now serving a prison sentence. “The idea that there had been a trial before any court was quite simply a lie”, Lawson said. She described it as a “false depiction of reality to placate the international community. Such deception not only demonstrates intent and knowledge, [...] it reflects endorsement of the crimes by providing cover for their continuation”.
From April 1999, Thaçi became the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Kosovo. “The evidence shows that throughout this time, the targeting of opponents did continue”, said Lawson. While the defence argued that in the climate of revenge that followed the war, these attacks were spontaneously led by individuals, the prosecution’s stance is that the location of the crimes and the involvement of the military police and intelligence members represent “compelling evidence” that the general staff members and some of the accused were involved in these attacks.
The victims’ suffering
Showing a map with blue dots scattered all over Kosovo and northern Albania, prosecutor James Pace spoke of “437 incidents of detention” between April 1998 and August 1999. In some locations, dozens of dots were clustered together. “Most of the victims were civilians not taking part in hostilities at the time of their arrests”, said Pace, adding that the violence was committed on political and ethnic grounds. “The blue dots represent farmers, teachers, business persons, retirees, those who socialize with Serbs, those who used to or continue to work in state-owned entities in order to make a living during the most difficult of times.” He added that people who did not join or supported the KLA or who were affiliated with other parties, such as the LDK (Democratic League of Kosovo) were also targeted. “Kosovo Albanian, Serb, Roma, Montenegrin, Bosnian, Macedonian. Men, women, and children.”
Victims were arrested from their homes or at checkpoints by masked men and did not have due process, Pace told the judges. He showed a photo of a dilapidated red brick house at the margin of a wood, with a miserable open shed on the left part of the garden wall. “Detainees were held in a room on the left of your screens and also in rooms in the house on the right.” Some stayed hours or days, others weeks or months, explained Pace.
“Many victims were held in locked or guarded rooms and provided no or inadequate food, water, sanitation facilities, hygiene facilities or medical care.” One victim lost 38 kg during his two-month-long detention. Detainees were questioned, “often before, while, or after being beaten”. Pace said that “some were instructed to confess to crimes they did not commit”.
In September 1998, Thaçi, Selimi and others allegedly led the arrest, detention, and intimidation of 13 members of a parliamentary delegation who were on a humanitarian visit to Qirez/Cirez. Thaçi is accused of threatening to kill one of them.
The silence that kills
Pace also spoke of the physical violence in detention. KLA members “punched and kicked detainees all over their bodies. They beat them with bottles, baseball bats, wooden sticks, rifles, and metal bars. They stabbed them with knives, stomped on them, and electrocuted them”. Presiding Judge Charles Smith looked at the four accused present in the courtroom. “Selimi beat a detainee with plastic pipes”, added Pace. In some areas, detainees were also forced to do physical work, such as sawing wood and digging their own graves. Victims were subject to psychological mistreatment, some were threatened with executions or falsely told that their relatives had been killed.
Detention left physical, mental and social scars on the victims. According to the prosecution, unfounded claims by the KLA of being a spy or a collaborator, “meant that victims and their family members continued to carry a stain which destroyed their reputation. It meant that they were treated as outsiders and were no longer welcome in their village”.
Relatives were also targeted, said Pace. Sometimes they were beaten or detained, “as they desperately sought to learn of their loved ones' fates”, without receiving any information. Many of the bodies were never found, and family members could not “achieve closure”. He spoke of a woman whose husband's remains were never found. “She said that the silence kills and that it has killed her and others for a second time.”
Common purpose
On February 10, the second and last day of the prosecution's closing statements, prosecutor Matthew Halling said that “the accused contributions have to be understood through their powerful collective role as key members of the general staff [of the KLA]”. According to him, “they combined their individual statures into something that was even greater than the sum of its parts. And in those roles, they were able to disseminate the common criminal purpose, appoint JCE [joint criminal enterprise] members and tools, coordinate their efforts, and deny crimes in an effort to blunt the international community's response”. For the indictment, the four accused were part of a joint criminal enterprise, whose “common purpose” was “to gain and exercise control over all of Kosovo”.
As the head of the political directorate of the KLA and later as Prime Minister, “Thaçi is a direct proponent of the common criminal purpose. You can see this particularly clearly in how he talks about the LDK, one of the groups targeted”, Halling told the court. “Describing Thaçi's contributions as neutral is farcical”, and he added that there is a “clear connection between Thaçi's words, the general staff's words, and the charged crimes”.
The indictment also states that the accused are responsible for failing to prevent and punish the crimes committed by their subordinates. As Veseli served as the head of the Intelligence Directorate, this failure represented “both a contribution to the charged JCE and a failure of his duties as a responsible superior”. Veseli was in Switzerland for long periods, but Halling argued that he could still exercise his authority from abroad, similarly to Thaçi and others.
Enabling the continued pursuit of criminal means
As the general inspector, Selimi supervised local commanders and was often on the ground. “Selimi, being able to release KLA military police suspected of crimes, illustrates both his authority in the KLA and his failure to exercise it to release wrongly detained victims or to punish the perpetrators”, said Halling.
He then turned to Jakup Krasniqi, the KLA spokesperson and from November 1998 its deputy commander. He was doing “far more than being just a spokesperson”. Halling said that the accused admitted in his own book “to writing those provisional regulations of the army, complete with the military police being tasked to be merciless to all those who oppose and sabotage the liberation war”.
“The KLA hierarchy is hardly perfect, but the indicators of effective control are there for all to see”, concluded Halling. “The accused created a collective decision-making structure, then spoke the words, made the appointments, participated in the crimes, and enabled the continued pursuit of criminal means by which to seize control over Kosovo.”
Closing statements by the defence teams will continue until February 18, when the accused will have a chance to speak in court. After that, the judges will have at least 90 days to issue a verdict. The trial started in April 2023 and has seen 130-plus witnesses testifying over the course of 227 hearings, with written statements by over 130 more witnesses. 155 victims are currently taking part in the case.
