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Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti condemned the guilty verdict handed down to four wartime leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army in The Hague on Wednesday as “an unacceptable injustice”.
In a video on Instagram, Kurti declared that the war crimes ruling “must undoubtedly be overturned and rectified on appeal”.
Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, former parliament speakers Kadri Veseli and Jakup Krasniqi and former MP Rexhep Selimi – all senior Kosovo Liberation Army officers during the 1998-99 conflict – were convicted of war crimes. Their lawyers say they will challenge the judgment.
Kurti’s statement was echoed by other senior Kosovo politicians, including Acting President, Albulena Haxhiu, who called the verdict handed down by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers “shocking”.
The opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK – which has been led by both Hashim Thaci and Kadri Veseli – also condemned the verdict, calling it “a great injustice, because it is based on claims and materials that we consider fabricated and nurtured over the years by the state apparatus and Serbian propaganda to criminalise the just war of the Kosovo Liberation Army [against Serbian forces]”.
Kosovo’s former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, who was found not guilty of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 2012, slammed the verdict as “unacceptable and unjust”.
“The KLA carried out a liberation war. The battle for justice should continue. This battle should be won,” Haradinaj said in a Facebook post.
Kosovo Albanians who gathered to hear the verdict livestreamed in Pristina and The Hague were also furious. In Pristina, they rallied in front of the government building and some threw stones, shattering some windows, as well as tearing down some barriers and pushing police officers.
Thousands of Albanians who had travelled to The Hague for the verdict erupted in anger when the convictions were announced. There was a brief clash with Dutch police, who prevented them marching towards the Specialist Chambers.
In neighbouring Albania, President Bajram Begaj expressed “deep sadness” about the verdict. “For Albanians, no one and nothing tarnishes the KLA!” Begaj declared in a Facebook post.
Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama, who has repeatedly criticised the trial as unjust, posted a graphic on Facebook showing barbed wire over a European map and the one-word message “Marre” (“Shame”).
Head of Milosevic’s old party says verdict confirms KLA were ‘terrorists’
Thaci was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the war crimes of arbitrary detention, cruel treatment, torture and murder. His co-defendants Krasniqi, Veseli and Selimi were sentenced to 25, 18 and 13 years in prison respectively.
Serbia’s Interior Minister Ivica Dacic welcomed the guilty verdict, saying it represents a “clear, though long-overdue, confirmation of what Serbia and the Serbian people have been saying loudly for more than a quarter of a century – that the so-called KLA was a criminal and terrorist organisation”.
Dacic is the leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia, the party once headed by Slobodan Milosevic, who led a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing and repression against Kosovo Albanians in 1998-99.
Dacic added that he thought it was a “direct insult to the victims” that the trial chamber had dismissed other charges against the KLA leaders that accused them of committing crimes against humanity.
During the delivery of the verdict, presiding judge Charles Smith III stressed that the case was “not about the legitimacy of the Kosovo Liberation Army”, saying that individuals were on trial, not the guerrilla force itself.
Some of Kosovo’s allies echoed this statement. The UK’s Minister for Europe, Lord Wood, said that “the court’s findings concern individuals and should not be used to inflame tensions between communities or across the region”.
Marta Kos, the European Commissioner for Enlargement, wrote on X that the verdict “is about individual accountability and justice for victims and their families from all communities in Kosovo”.
Responding to the verdict, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told a press conference that it should not be received with “any kind of euphoria”, condemning the fact that the trial chamber had dismissed charges relating to crimes against humanity.
He compared the differing Western reactions to the verdict convicting the KLA leaders and the funeral of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic in Belgrade last week. EU officials have repeatedly condemned the glorification of Mladic at his funeral, which was held with military honours.
Vucic cited statements by Kosovo officials claiming the defendants were innocent liberators, saying: “My question is – imagine if we had said that, about any accused or convicted person? How many resolutions and declarations would have been adopted against our country in various regional, European and international parliaments?”
During the Kosovo war, Vucic was serving as Serbia’s information minister in the government appointed by nationalist strongman Milosevic.
Meanwhile in neighbouring Croatia, which has a strained relationship with its wartime foe Serbia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that the verdict “does not alter the historical context of the war in Kosovo, nor the fact that Kosovo and its population were victims of repression and grave crimes committed by the Milosevic regime”.