On 16 September 2026, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers delivered its trial judgment finding Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi guilty of the war crimes of unlawful or arbitrary arrest and detention, cruel treatment, torture and murder. Thaçi and Krasniqi were each sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment, Veseli to 18 years and Selimi to 13 years, with credit for time spent in detention. The judgment is not final.
The Trial Panel found that at least 385 persons were unlawfully arrested and detained, at least 49 were subjected to cruel treatment, at least 303 were tortured, and 96 were murdered. At the same time, all four accused were acquitted on six counts of crimes against humanity.
The criminal responsibility of all four was established on the basis of their significant contribution to a joint criminal enterprise. The Panel found that the accused and other KLA leaders shared a common criminal purpose: the systematic arrest, detention, mistreatment and killing of persons whom they considered or labelled as opponents.
Among the key pieces of evidence were communiqués issued by the KLA General Staff. They were not merely propaganda: they conveyed the positions and decisions of General Staff members concerning persons labelled as “spies”, “traitors” and “collaborators”, and were understood and implemented on the ground as orders to arrest, punish and kill. Some communiqués explicitly stated that punishments and executions had been carried out pursuant to decisions of the General Staff, while recovered drafts show that expressions such as “armed attacks” and “liquidated” were changed in the published versions to “punitive measures” and “measures were taken”.
The judgment documents detention sites in 14 municipalities in Kosovo and two locations in northern Albania. Those detained, tortured, killed or disappeared were not only Serbs and Roma, but also Kosovo Albanians – members of the LDK, people with no political affiliation, as well as KLA members and supporters.
The Panel also found that the accused were aware of unlawful arrests and detention, mistreatment and killings, but failed to take effective measures to prevent or stop the crimes, investigate them or punish those responsible. The Panel concluded that they contributed to a climate of impunity and, in some instances, protected or promoted persons implicated in crimes.
A total of 156 victims participated in the proceedings. Their testimony brought back to the centre of the case the experiences of people detained without any genuine legal process, severely beaten and tortured, as well as those of families who, more than two decades later, still do not know the fate of their loved ones.
Kosovo’s political elites have entrenched the narrative of the KLA’s heroic struggle for freedom against Serbian forces as virtually the only permissible interpretation of the war. That narrative cannot alter the facts established by the judgment: detention sites existed, people were mistreated there, and many were killed or disappeared. Labelling someone a “collaborator” cannot substitute for evidence, due process and the determination of individual responsibility, nor can it justify abduction, torture, disappearance or murder.
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 (MUP) officers before Serbian courts is justified. According to data collected by the Humanitarian Law Center and the Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo, Serbian forces killed 6,872 Albanian civilians in Kosovo between 20 March and 14 June 1999. Twenty-seven years later, not a single senior VJ or MUP commander has been prosecuted in Serbia for operations in which thousands of civilians were killed, despite thousands of facts established in ICTY judgments concerning the actions of VJ and MUP units and their links to command structures headed by generals who were ultimately convicted.
Such institutional inaction shows that Serbia continues to side with those convicted and 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.
But the victims of the crimes for which, according to the trial judgment, the former KLA leaders bear responsibility were not only Serbs and Roma, nor only the KLA’s political opponents. They included Kosovo Albanians, LDK members, people with no political affiliation, and KLA members and supporters. They must be spoken about by their names and through documents and evidence – not through labels imposed on them to justify their punishment.
