TIRANA, April 3 – Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He went on trial on Monday with three co-defendants, accused of killing nearly 100 people and other atrocities including enforced disappearances.
The allegations date from Kosovo’s independence war against Serbia in 1998-99 in which more than 10,000 died.
Prosecutor Alex Whiting said in his opening statement that the 54-year-old Thaci, who has been in detention for the past two years as he awaited trial, and the other defendants targeted ethnic Serbs and Roma during the conflict and in its aftermath.
“I understand the indictment and I am fully not guilty,” Thaci, who was wearing a dark pinstripe suit, told judges at the court in the opening stage of the hearing.
Thaci is standing trial along with Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi for offenses allegedly committed across Kosovo and northern Albania from 1998 to September 1999, during and after the war, and they also denied the charges.
Thaci was co-founder of a group fighting for independence and is regarded as a hero in Kosovo.
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was set up in the early 1990s as a militant group of ethnic Albanians, in what was then a province of Serbia, and during the war is alleged to have carried out attacks on the region’s ethnic Serb minority.
When Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, Thaci became its first prime minister and later president, but resigned in 2020 to face the charges in The Hague.
Victims and human rights groups hope his trial – at a special court known as the Kosovo Specialist Chambers – will reveal what happened to some of the thousands of people who vanished during the Kosovo conflict.
According to the court’s indictment, the crimes took place in more than 100 locations in Kosovo and in northern Albania, where Serb civilians were allegedly detained and mistreated or murdered.
As the trial opened, hundreds of supporters of Thaci and the other defendants gathered near The Hague’s central railway station. Many waved flags and banners, including one that read: “Don’t equal victims with the criminals!” Another proclaimed: “KLA fought for freedom.”
Vullnet Guri, who traveled from Switzerland to join the demonstration told The Associated Press: “We are protesting here for liberation of our fighters, they fight actually only for our freedom, and it is a big injustice to put them in the same quality of the Serbian army that made genocide in our country.”
Prosecution lawyer Clare Lawson stressed that the KLA itself was not in the dock.
“The KLA is not on trial. The liberation war waged by the KLA is not on trial. These four accused are on trial in respect of their personal responsibility for crimes committed against persons who they viewed as opponents, a majority of whom were in fact their fellow Kosovo Albanians,” she said. “In their bid for supremacy, they entrenched a climate of fear pitting neighbor against neighbor, a climate which still persists today.”
Lawyers for Thaci and the other defendants are scheduled to deliver their opening statements on Tuesday. The first witnesses are expected to testify next week. /Compiled from newswires
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