In a landmark verdict delivered this week at a courtroom in The Hague, former Kosovo president Hashim Thaci has received a 25-year prison sentence following his conviction on multiple charges of war crimes tied to Kosovo’s 1990s independence campaign against Serbia. The 58-year-old ex-political leader was found guilty of a slate of offenses, including murder, unlawful detainment, torture, and inhumane treatment of civilians and opponents, after a marathon three-year judicial proceedings.
Thaci’s conviction stems from his time as a co-founder and senior military commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the ethnic Albanian militant group that waged an armed struggle for separation from what was then Serbian territory. The 1990s conflict that pitted KLA fighters against Serbian forces ultimately claimed the lives of over 10,000 people, according to official records. Prosecutors had accused Thaci of orchestrating the deaths of nearly 100 people and carrying out enforced disappearances alongside other atrocities; however, a panel of judges ruled that several additional allegations against him could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Founded in the early 1990s, the KLA emerged to push for Kosovar independence from Serbian rule, with the group alleged to have targeted the region’s ethnic Serb minority during the conflict. Following Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence, Thaci rose to become the new nation’s first prime minister, and later assumed the presidency — a post he stepped down from in 2020 to surrender to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He was not tried alone; three other former KLA commanders are standing trial alongside Thaci on nearly identical war crime charges, with verdicts for those co-defendants still pending.
The verdict has sent deep ripples across Kosovo, where Thaci remains a widely celebrated figure for his role in securing independence. Thousands of Kosovo residents gathered in public spaces across the country on Wednesday to watch the ruling broadcast on large outdoor screens. In the capital city of Pristina, visual footage from the scene shows supporters of the former leader openly weeping as the sentence was announced.