Kosovo’s Thaci defends innocence ahead of Hague war crimes ruling
Recorded by Fatoş Bytyci
PRISTINA, Feb 18 (Reuters) – Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci told judges at a war crimes trial in The Hague on Wednesday that justice could not be achieved by “trial of the innocent”.
Thaci and three other former Kosovo Liberation Army commanders are accused of atrocities, murder, torture and enforced disappearances during and immediately after the 1998-99 uprising that eventually brought the Albanian-majority region’s independence from Serbia.
They deny all accusations.
In his last speech to the court before the decision, which is expected to be issued within three months, Thaci said, “Justice for the victims cannot be achieved by trying the innocent, and reconciliation cannot be achieved through selective and ethnically based investigations.” he said.
Thaci, 57, called allegations that he and the other defendants were plotting a violent campaign to seize political control of Kosovo “untrue, utterly ridiculous and deeply offensive.”
The defense team said there was no evidence directly linking Thaci to any of the alleged crimes and there was insufficient evidence to show he controlled other KLA commanders.
Last week, prosecutors requested a 45-year prison sentence for Taci and other defendants after a nearly three-year trial.
They say more than 100 political opponents and perceived collaborators with Serbian security forces were killed and hundreds more mistreated in nearly 50 detention camps run by the KLA in 1998 and 1999.
Thaci and three other defendants (former parliament speakers Jakup Krasniqi and Kadri Veseli, and former MP Rexhep Selimi) were arrested in 2020 and sent to stand trial at the special Kosovo war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
More than 13,000 people, mostly Kosovo Albanians, are believed to have died during the rebellion in the late 1990s, when Kosovo was still a province of Serbia under the rule of then-President Slobodan Milosevic and his troops imposed a violent crackdown on ethnic Albanians.
KLA leaders are seen by many in Kosovo as national liberation heroes. Thousands of people demonstrated in the capital Pristina on Tuesday in support of former KLA commanders.
(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci, Editing by Gareth Jones)
