The ambiguities of the Kosovo Chambers

Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi were all high-ranking figures of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) who went on to become prominent Kosovo politicians. Thaçi served as prime minister, foreign minister and president of Kosovo between 2008 and 2020, when he resigned to defend himself before the EU-sponsored court called the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC), based in The Hague. On September 16, the panel of judges found them guilty of war crimes for arbitrarily detaining 385 people, the cruel treatment of 49 people, torturing 303 people and killing 96 people. All crimes were committed between April 1998 and 20 June 1999 in several detention centres and locations across Kosovo and Northern Albania.  The Trial Panel found the accused not guilty of crimes against humanity. The prosecution “failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this attack was directed against a civilian population,” said presiding judge Charles Smith.

During the Kosovo conflict, the four accused “contributed significantly” to the common criminal purpose of targeting KLA perceived opponents, said Judge Smith. The crimes were all the consequences of “a criminal plan that had been devised by the accused and others and which they implemented personally”, he told the courtroom, where all accused were present, and a full public gallery. A few thousand people also followed the judgment livestream.

While the KLA goal of “securing Kosovo's independence and establishing political institutional control over what they hoped would be an independent Kosovo”, did not “rendered their acts criminal”, Judge Smith said, “it is the means by which they sought to achieve them that did. In particular, the systematic arrest, detention, mistreatment and killing of those the accused perceived or described as the opponents”. Victims included Kosovo Albanians associated with other political or military forces, people alleged to be associated with the Serbs, sometimes for reasons such as having Serbian friends or working for Serbian companies, and members of ethnic minorities, such as Roma and Serbs, said the court.

Thaçi and Krasniqi were sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment, Veseli to 18 years and Selimi to 13. Time already served will be taken out of the sentence. They and the prosecution have now 30 days to appeal. 

Political reactions in Kosovo

The crimes were committed in the context of the 1998-99 ethnic Albanian war for independence from Serbia, which ruled over the region. Most of the 13,000 people who died in the war were ethnic Albanians. Another million were driven from their homes. However, the KSC were created to deal only with alleged crimes by the KLA, which has been seen as a liberation army by a majority of Kosovars.

“This case is not concerned with weighing the responsibilities of one side against those of the other. This case is not concerned with the crimes of Serbian forces and paramilitaries undoubtedly committed against Kosovo Albanians,” clarified Judge Smith. He added the Court is “exclusively concerned” with the individual criminal responsibility of the accused.

However, large crowds waving KLA flags had gathered in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital city, to watch the verdict from giant public screens on Wednesday. After the judgement, some protesters marched towards the headquarters of the EU mission in Kosovo and were contained by riot police. Political parties in Kosovo have called for calm.

Prime Minister of Kosovo Albin Kurti said that the conviction and “such a severe sentence” were an “unacceptable injustice”. He added that they did not represent “the will of the people”. While Kosovo Foreign Minister Glauk Konjufca added that the judgment “will be very damaging, both for our narrative and for the state of Kosovo”. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama also criticised the ruling. The EU has called on all parties to respect the KSC verdict.

Two blasts from the past

“The sensitivities involved in this have been grossly underestimated by the internationals who created this court”, Aidan Hehir, Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster, told Justice Info before the verdict. “I don't think they quite realised how visceral a finding that they're guilty will be. This could have a really deep impact on Kosovo society. The opposition to the court is about much more than Hashim Thaçi”, he continued. “The young people in particular got very tired of the corruption in Kosovo. I've met lots of people who intensely dislike Thaçi and believe he should be in court, but believe he should be in court for corruption, not for being part of an organisation that was defending the Kosovo Albanians against state-sponsored mass slaughter,” Hehir said. He explained it is not about the political affiliation, but it has “much more to do with the image of the country, which people are very angry about”.

Amer Alija, from the Pristina-based Humanitarian Law Centre, does not think that this trial has brought any “direct improvements” on the ground. “There is a risk that the proceedings and judgments of the KSC may be used politically by the parties to reinforce their respective narratives about the war, rather than contributing to a broader and more balanced process of dealing with the past,” he said, anticipating a conviction. “The judgment may also affect the level of public trust in the KSC and may deepen political and social polarization. Part of society may perceive this conviction not only as a judgment against four individuals, but also as an indirect judgment on the KLA and the liberation war. Legally, these are two entirely different issues: the Court is deciding on the individual criminal responsibility of the accused, not on the character of the KLA as a whole. However, at the social and political level, this distinction may be much more difficult to maintain,” he warned.

The verdict comes at a heated moment. On August 27, Bosnian Serb leader Ratko Mladić died in The Hague. He was serving a life sentence handed by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Thousands attended the funeral, held in Serbia. “To honour someone like Mladić shows something is deeply troubling within a society”, says Fred Abrahams, co-director of the Aryeh Neier Center for Justice in Berlin. He worked on Kosovo for Human Rights Watch, an NGO, at the time of the conflict and testified both at the ICTY and at the KSC. Mladić’s death “shows the gaps between the societies and the challenges for reconciliation and justice”, he says. With the Thaçi judgment out a couple of weeks later, “it's a double header of bringing back the past in a very short period, after so long”.

Half a billion euros

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. Its funding comes from the European Union, and according to the Court’s annual reports, it has amounted to €497,312,702 since 2016 – i.e. an average of 50 million euros a year. Five states also contribute to the Court, many by sending staff, while Switzerland pays for its outreach program in Kosovo. In the annual reports, the Swiss contribution has totaled €605,200 since 2018. The Court does not disclose its budget lines so it is not possible to know how much money was spent on the war crimes trial for Thaçi and the three others. Information is scarce also when it comes to the defence budget, which the government of Kosovo pays. In January 2026, data from the Ministry of Justice published by "Betimi për Drejtësi" revealed that in 2025, the Republic of Kosovo paid €6,515,067 for the defence at the KSC. The largest amount, €1,320,000 for each of the defendants, was spent on this main war crimes trial.

The argument on witness intimidation

“This trial was conducted against the backdrop of a persistent climate of witness intimidation”, said Judge Smith on Wednesday. “Some witnesses may have been afraid or unwilling to tell the panel their full story out of concerns for their own and their family's safety. Others out of misplaced loyalty.” Nevertheless, “several witnesses did so in the face of intimidation and attempts to discourage them from testifying,” he stated. “The panel's ability to render this judgment is a testimony to their courage and determination.”

“Probably the main reason that this court exists is witness intimidation”, says Abrahams. The Kosovo Court was specifically set up outside of the country because of worries over the protection of those testifying. Witness intimidation has been at the heart of the successive attempts by the international community to bring accountability for serious crimes committed in the Kosovo war. It was already a hurdle at the ICTY. For instance, when ICTY judges acquitted former KLA commander Fatmir Limaj, they wrote that many witnesses “expressed concerns for their lives and those of their family” and that fear was very perceptive, especially for witnesses still living in Kosovo.

Witness protection measures in the trial for Thaci and the three others often included holding hearings behind closed doors. Since its start in April 2023, 134 witnesses, the vast majority from the prosecution side, 2 for the victims’ side and 7 for the defence, testified in the trial, which lasted 234 hearing days. 70 witnesses testified mostly in public session, and 61 of them did not have any protective measures, Angela Griep, head of public information and communication at the Court, told Justice Info. However, another 64 were heard mostly or completely in private sessions, although some of their transcripts have since been made public.

Nevertheless, besides three war crimes cases, the court has also seen three cases for obstruction of justice or intimidation of witnesses. The latest one, which held closing statements last week, saw Thaçi himself accused of allegedly violating the secrecy of the proceedings.

The high number of private hearings has fueled mistrust across Kosovo society. “The main challenges faced by the Court in the cases it has handled were, first and foremost, ensuring transparency,” said Alija. He stated that not being able to follow almost half of the trial made it less accessible to the public and to monitors. He also disputed the idea that Kosovo could not deal with the issue. “We have dozens of cases in front of the Kosovo courts. During the 26 years after the war, we have sometimes had cases when people put pressure on others to testify or not. But in general, witnesses are testifying without pressure,” he argued.

International failure

According to Hehir, “the idea that the local court system doesn't work comes back to the internationals because they created that system”. Since 1999, thousands of internationals have been based in Kosovo. In June that year the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) and the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), supported by the regional security organisation OSCE Mission, were deployed in the country to stop the ongoing violence and provide interim administration. In 2008, the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) was also launched. “Anybody that spent any time looking into what happened in Kosovo after 1999 would have to conclude that there was massive corruption in Kosovo, and that the international community knew about it and went along with it,” said Hehir. In 2017, the World Bank published an extensive report on corruption in the Balkan state.

The international organisations that were in Pristina at the time and the governments that contributed to them are also “metaphorically on trial” before the KSC, said Abrahams. “The crimes that happened after the war happened under the nose of these internationals, and they didn't speak because they wanted stability,” he said. “That's a huge failure.”

“By admitting to their active role in the region, the EU and its partners could have opened a new dialogue that could have eventually led to the admittance of all parties of the established facts of the wars,” said Frauke Seebass, visiting fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Brussels, who focuses on Kosovo and the EU enlargement policies. She said the moment could still be seized, “since the verdict is going to spur the war of narratives even more, during a time when tensions are more explosive than they have been in a long time”.

Lack of local legitimacy

Kosovars have long accused the Court of being one-sided, as it does not look at crimes committed by the Serbs. “The proceedings have reopened highly sensitive discussions about the war, the victims and the role of the KLA,” said Alija. “Among a significant part of Kosovo society, there is a perception that the Specialist Chambers are selective, since their focus has been on alleged crimes committed by members of the KLA. This has created a sense of inequality, particularly when viewed against the scale of crimes committed by Serbian forces during the war.”

Adding to that is the political dimension, as Thaçi and the other men left politics to hand themselves to the Court in The Hague. “This affected the domestic political balance and made the Court a constant part of political debate in Kosovo,” said Alija. “The length of the proceedings and the prolonged pre-trial detention have also contributed to criticism and polarization.” The preparation phase in the Thaçi trial, which started in late 2020 took well over two years.

In his 2019 publication Lessons Learned? The Kosovo Specialist Chambers’ Lack of Local Legitimacy and Its Implications, Hehir argued that the KSC lacked “local legitimacy and local ownership”, which are pillars of transitional justice processes, he wrote. “It didn't have it in the beginning and it certainly doesn't have it now,” he said seven years later. “I don't believe that people in Kosovo feel like it's a court they have any control over.” The outreach program, which has organised regular meetings with journalists, civil society and schools in Kosovo, has not engaged enough with the general public, Hehir said. “The vast majority of people that you speak to in Kosovo don't really understand what the KSC is, why it was created and how it works.”

Helping reconciliation?

“The court is not perfect, and Kosovars were the primary victims in this conflict,” agreed Abrahams. “But nobody is above the law and it does not matter if your cause is just. And that's where the Kosovo political scene is confusing the issue: they're confusing the objectivity and independence of the law with the politics of the conflict,” he said. “The conversation is always about politics, but what about the victims?” he asked. “This is an important court to send a message to any armed force, any armed group, state group, military force, paramilitary force, that the laws of war apply to all parties, anywhere.”

“The most important question in the long run is: will this court help with reconciliation and building a stable region?,” said Abrahams. And according to him, the signs are not “very positive”. He also pointed to the ICTY as an example: despite all the trials it held, there are still “deep divisions” among Bosnians, Croatians and Serbians.

According to Seebass, “the political instrumentalisation of the proceedings is likely to far outshine any effects on inter- and intra-societal reflection and reconciliation”. She argued that “local perceptions of the trial have reinforced grievances and narratives of victimhood on both sides [Kosovo and Serbia], rather than contributing to reflection and dialogue,” and “the feeling of injustice inhibits constructive dealing with the contents of the proceedings”. She noted that ethnic and regional relations are “at an especially low point”.

The perception of the KSC has contributed to “the worsening relations between Kosovo and its Western partners,” Seebass said. “The fact that the trial took place outside Kosovo, while an understandable decision, also increased the perception of foreign interference, especially during a time when many Kosovars crave sovereignty and self-determination,” she added. While Kosovo declared independence in 2008, not every country has recognised it.

“A contested legacy”

However, Abrahams argued that “individual accountability cannot function alone” and more mechanisms are needed. He pointed to the wider landscape: “This trial is happening with still no resolution to the political status of Kosovo. There is still lots of distrust and anger. The negotiation process [with Serbia] is not moving forward. So the court lands at this moment, and it makes everybody angry,” he said. The Court is only “one actor with one role, to prosecute, and it pursued that role. It can be criticised for this, but it has to be put in the context of larger challenges”. He hoped the conversation will turn towards “reconciliation around harm, returning bodies, truth-telling”.

The verdict in the last remaining trial for the alleged obstruction of justice will also be issued over the next few months, and the KSC is expected to wind down after that. “I believe the KSC will leave behind a contested legacy,” said Alija. “On the one hand, it has underlined the importance of individual criminal responsibility and the investigation of serious crimes, while also establishing important mechanisms for witness protection and victim participation.” On the other hand, the Court will likely be remembered for its focus on crimes committed only by one side of the conflict, “which has contributed to perceptions of selective justice in Kosovo”. According to him, this demonstrates that “it is not enough for a process simply to be legally sound; justice must also be perceived as impartial, equal and inclusive”.

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