The story so far: Hashim Thaci, the former President of Kosovo, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after being found guilty of war crimes by a special European Union-backed court at The Hague. The trial found him guilty of crimes including murder, arbitrary detention, illegal arrests, torture etc during the Kosovo war in the late 1990s as a senior commandant of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Three other former KLA commanders were also sentenced for several different charges.
Kosovo was once part of the erstwhile Republic of Yugoslavia. Post the Second World War, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was reconstituted as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito. which included Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia, and the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and and Vojvodina, under a centralised government, following his death, this centralised system started coming under pressure While Tito was able to unify the multiple republics. In Kosovo, where Thaci is still seen as a revolutionary and revered figure, the verdict was met with outrage and tears. People who had poured into the streets of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, to hear the verdict on a big screen were shocked and shouted slogans in support of the KLA and Thaci. However, the Serbian side has welcomed the judgement.
Multiple factors such as divisions between the republics, rising nationalist movements, economic pressure, the disintegration of the Soviet Union all contributed to the eventual dissolution of Yugoslavia in 2003. At least 15 people have been charged by the Chambers , out of which Thaci is the most senior figure. Charges were brought against him in 2020, when he was President of Kosovo, following which he had to resign from the position and stand trial as an ordinary citizen.
Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurit said the verdict was “a travesty of justice”. Serbia’s Deputy Prime Minister Ivica Dacic called the verdicts a “warning” to Pristina “that a fake state cannot be built on mass graves of murdered Serbs”.
