TRIAL AND CONVICTION OF KOSOVO LEADERS
On September 16, 2026, the Kosovo Specialist Chamber (KSC) found four KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) leaders guilty of war crimes for arbitrarily detaining 385 people, the cruel treatment of 49, torturing 303, and killing 96 and imposed lengthy sentences. The Court acquitted them of Crimes Against Humanity because it found the prosecution failed to prove the crimes were directed against a civilian population. Six years ago the men all resigned their positions in government and turned themselves in to the KSC. They have been in jail ever since.
The convicted are: Hashim Thaci (served as Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and President of Kosovo between 2008 and 2020) - 25 years; Kadri Veseli (served as Chair of the Assembly and Intelligence Service) - 18 years; Rexhep Selimi (former parliamentary leader) - 13 years, and Jakup Krasniqi (Acting Kosovo President 2010 to 2011 and Assembly Speaker) - 25 years.[1] Three were founding members of the KLA and all were on its General Staff.
The convictions are controversial, as is the KSC, which was established in 2015 under pressure from the EU (European Union) and U.S. solely to try members of the KLA.
MY EXPERIENCE
In 1997 and 1998, I was serving in Belgrade, Serbia for the American Bar Association's Central & East European Law Initiative (ABA/CEELI) to support efforts to establish an independent judiciary. The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina had ended with the Dayton Accords in 1995. Slobodan Milosevic, formerly President of Serbia, was President of the rump Yugoslavia (consisting of Serbia and Montenegro) from 1997 to 2000. He had assumed power in 1989, in significant part by exploiting Serb anxieties in Kosovo and Serb nationalism throughout much of the former Yugoslavia. Some Serbs considered Kosovo the cradle of Serbdom. Milosevic manipulated that belief to gain and maintain power.
Kosovo had been an autonomous province of the FRY until Milosevic abolished its autonomy in 1989, setting in motion Albanian boycotts of Serb institutions. Though Albanians were by far the largest population, Serb authorities were in control. They discriminated against Albanians, whose language was not allowed in schools and public institutions. In response, the Albanian community established their own institutions, including schools which were held in private homes. Unlike Slav groups in the former Yugoslavia, they lived an apartheid existence. At a women's law conference, one of my feminist colleagues, a Serb, admitted that she didn't know any Albanians. Unusually, other Serbs, especially from Women in Black and the Belgrade Women's Center, nurtured Albanian friendships. We socialized as well as worked with both Albanians and Serbs.
My partner and I visited Kosovo several times for business and pleasure. Serbian and federal forces patrolled the streets of its capital, Pristina. Curfews were imposed. In 1998, we began hearing of Serbian police attacks against Albanians. A few a week at first, but it escalated. They were part of Milosevic's policy to ethnically cleanse the Province to enhance his power and control.
The KLA arose in 1997 to defend Albanians who were being forced from the province by destruction of homes and livelihoods as well as killings. For eight years, Kosovo Albanians had followed a policy of nonviolent resistance to Serb oppression. Yet the international community ignored them. When the Dayton Accords were signed in 1995 ending hostilities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the ongoing violence and oppression in Kosovo was not even a footnote.
Killings in Kosovo continued, a few every week. Then, in February 1998, Serb forces carried out a massacre in Drenica. An Albanian friend and colleague summoned us to help document it for the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia). Police had murdered 91 people, including 12 children, 15 women (3 pregnant) and 7 elders. Photos showed signs of torture. One woman was shot at point blank range as her small child stood in front of her. Killings, property destruction, forced expulsion and rapes continued throughout the year.
In January 1999, Serb forces massacred 45 civilians in Racak.[2] The international community pressed for negotiations between Kosovar Albanians and the FRY. They went nowhere. Slobodan Milosevic refused to relinquish any measure of control of the province. ABA/CEELI evacuated me and my partner days before NATO dropped the first bombs on March 29, 1999. By that time, Serb forces had murdered between 1500 and 2000 Kosovo Albanians.
Within a few weeks, I was assigned to lead a war crimes documentation project among Kosovo refugees in Macedonia. The war lasted until June 10, 1999, when Milosevic capitulated. The peace agreement was signed by NATO and the FRY. The KLA was not part of it.
While the KLA fought to protect Kosovo Albanians, the Kosovo War was not a civil war between two states, as some have recently claimed. By the end of the war, 13,000 people, mostly Albanian, were dead, one million were refugees, whole villages had been destroyed, somewhere between 10,000 and 45,000 Albanian women had been raped and others tortured and brutalized. These crimes were part of a joint criminal enterprise planned and directed at the highest levels of the rump Yugoslavia, commanded by Slobodan Milosevic. The KLA was a defensive force of Albanians. It had no state apparatus behind it.
KLA members also committed crimes against civilians (Serbs, Roma, Albanians, and others), including detentions, torture and murder, but nowhere near the scale of Serbia's campaign of violence and ethnic cleansing.[3]
LEGAL CONSEQUENCES
The ICTY indicted Milosevic and six other high ranking Serbs in the government and police for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kosovo. Milosevic died in jail before the end of his trial. Of the others, five were convicted with sentences of 15 to 22 years, one was acquitted.
The ICTY also prosecuted members of the KLA in two cases for crimes committed against Serbs, Roma and suspected Albanian collaborators: Limaj et al. and Haradinaj et al. While the court concluded that the crimes had been committed and KLA members were responsible for a number of them,
"[The prosecution] failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the link between the direct perpetrators and the accused KLA commanders. Nor did it prove the existence of a joint criminal enterprise whose goal was to strengthen KLA control over parts of Kosovo through a campaign of crimes against civilians."[4]
Internationals, such as NATO General Wesley Clark, testified to this in the KSC's Thaci, et al. trial.
The ICTY convicted Haradin Bala for his individual acts that constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison. The ICTY acquitted all other accused KLA members who were prosecuted. The ICTY ended its proceedings on December 31, 2017.
I did not follow the Thaci, et al. trial in the KSC. Nor did I follow the machinations that led to the KSC's establishment. Credible sources claim that Kosovo was pressured to establish the court because of witness intimidation in Kosovo state courts. In addition to the recent conviction of the four Kosovo leaders, the KSC has tried and convicted seven Albanians; an additional four remain on trial. State courts in Serbia have also prosecuted Kosovo Albanians for war crimes, though the number is unavailable in public sources.[5]
CONCLUSION
The Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre recently concluded:
At the same time, the discontent in Kosovo over the near-total absence of prosecutions of senior Yugoslav Army (VJ) and Serbian Ministry of the Interior command structures headed by generals who were ultimately convicted. Such institutional inaction shows that Serbia continues to side with those convictedand to protect VJ and MUP officers linked to structures responsible for the gravest crimes against Kosovo Albanians, rather than standing with the victims and pursuing individual criminal responsibility.[6]
It is noteworthy that Aleksandar Vucic, President of Serbia, was Slobodan Milosevic's Minister of Information during the Kosovo conflict.[7]
Most Serbs -- and many other Slavs in the region -- looked down on Albanians as an inferior race. Living in the U.S., I am not unfamiliar with racism -- its blatant as well as its subtler manifestations. Treatment of Kosovo Albanians -- by Serbs as well as the international community (the U.S. and EU) that forced post war Kosovo to adopt the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, established solely to try KLA members -- raises the specter of racism, as do the convictions and lengthy sentences handed down for four Kosovo Albanian leaders -- particularly in light of almost no effort to try Serbs for far greater and more extensive crimes against Albanians. Moreover, none of the state leaders convicted by the ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Kosovo Albanians received the maximum sentences imposed on Thaci and Krasniqi, i.e. 25 years.[8]
[1] The Defendants' lawyers said they would appeal. The Prosecution may also appeal. The Appeals Panel can affirm, reverse, or modify the verdicts and change sentences.
[2] In July 2026, Kosovo put 21 Serb officials on trial in absentia for the massacre. The men are charged with murder, torture, inhumane treatment, destruction of property and deportation of civilians to Albania.
[3] According to Human Rights Watch, as many as 1000 Serbs and Roma were killed or missing in Kosovo after June 12, 1999. "Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo," Abrahams, Fred and Benjamin Ward, 2001, www.hrw.org-reports-Under-Orders-En-combined.pdf. A Serbian government 2002 report found 847 civilians and security forces had been killed between June 10, 1999 and November 11, 2001. These were assumed to be revenge killings and kidnappings after Serb forces left the Province. They were not part of the Thaci, et al. case before the KSC.
[4] SENSE News Agency, ICTY: The Kosovo Case 1998-1999, www.kosovo.sensecentar.org
[5] The Belgrade Humanitarian Law Center, an NGO, issued a report in June 2025 finding that of eight indictments for war crimes filed by Serbian prosecutors seven were against Kosovo Albanians. "REPORT ON WAR CRIMES TRIALS IN SERBIA IN 2024," reported by CNN "Serbia Number of indictments against Kosovo Albanians increases," June 16, 2025. Prosecutors in Serbia also filed their first case for genocide, again against a Kosovo Albanian.
[6] Humanitarian Law Centre, www.hlc-rdc.org 16.09.2026 Press Release. Serbia has tried 60 individuals for crimes during the Kosovo War, convicting 17 to 23 (sources vary). But the government has shown little political will to prosecute higher ranking officials.
[7] Vucic resigned his current position in September 2026 to run for Serbian Prime Minister in the October 25 parliamentary elections.
[8] Nebojsa Pavkovic, Commander of the VJ Third Army, was sentenced to 22 years; Sreten Lukic, head of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) for Kosovo, 20 years; Nikola Sainovic, Deputy Prime Minister of the FRY, 18 years (served 13 years); Dragoljub Ojdanic, Chief of General Staff of the Yugoslav Army (VJ), 15 years (served 11 years); Vladimir Lazarevic, Commander of VJ Pristina Corps, 14 years (served 12 years). In a separate trial, Vlastimir Djordjevic, Assistant Minister of Serbian MUP, received a 27 year sentence reduced to 18 years.