A Pristina court on Thursday sentenced a Roma man to ten years in prison for torturing civilians during Kosovo's 1998-99 conflict with Serbia.
Skender Bislimi is the first Roma, a minority group in the region, to be convicted of war crimes in the independence struggle that pitted ethnic Albanian guerillas against Serb forces.
The 58-year-old was found guilty of torturing ethnic Albanian civilians in March 1999 as a member of a Serb paramilitary group.
Bislimi, who acted "together with at least 10 members" of the group, "violated the bodily integrity and health of more than 40 civilians, Albanian males, by applying measures of intimidation and terror," the Pristina court said in a statement.
"The men were originally separated from women and children, then the males were forced to stay on their knees, were beaten and forced to sing Serbian songs."
Bislimi was extradited to Kosovo from Bosnia in 2016 after being held on an international arrest warrant.
The war paved the way for Kosovo's independence and claimed 13,000 lives, mostly ethnic Albanians.
But Kosovo Roma were also victims of abuse.
According to the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC), a prominent rights watchdog in the Balkans, Kosovo Roma were often forced by the Serb side to bury bodies of Albanian civilians and fighters, dig trenches for the military and pillage and destroy ethnic Albanian property.
Some 240 were killed or went missing during the war, while tens of thousands fled Kosovo after the fighting in fear of reprisals from ethnic Albanians, according HLC's Kosovo branch.
Out of an estimated 100,000 Roma or more who lived in Kosovo before the war, only 35,000 remain today.
The war was brought to an end by a three-month NATO aerial bombing campaign that ousted Serb forces from Kosovo, a former southern province.
Of some 111 persons who have been indicted on war crimes charges since 1999 in Kosovo, only 40 of have been convicted, according to HLC.
