Former Kosovo president Hashim Thaçi has been sentenced to 25 years in prison on September 16 for war crimes committed during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war.
The sentence was handed down by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, a Kosovo-established court based in the Netherlands and staffed by international judges and prosecutors, created specifically to prosecute crimes allegedly committed during and after the Kosovo conflict.
Thaçi was convicted for crimes committed when he was a senior commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the ethnic Albanian armed movement that fought Serbian forces controlling Kosovo during the war.
He was found guilty on four counts of war crimes: murder, torture, cruel treatment and arbitrary detention. The trial panel held the former KLA leadership responsible for the murder of 96 people, the arbitrary detention of 385, the torture of 303 and the cruel treatment of 49.
The verdict marks a fall for one of Kosovo’s most prominent political figures and for a man regarded as a national hero by many Kosovo Albanians because of his role in the struggle for independence from Serbia.
Thaçi, 58, rose to prominence during the Kosovo war as one of the leading figures of the KLA. After the conflict, he transformed himself from guerrilla commander into a politician, serving as prime minister, foreign minister and then president of Kosovo between 2008 and 2020.
He was a central figure in the process that led to Kosovo’s disputed declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008.
Kosovo is recognised primarily by Western countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia and Turkey, as well as by 22 of the European Union’s 27 member states. The five EU countries that do not recognise Kosovo are Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia.
Serbia considers Kosovo part of its sovereign territory, while Russia and China, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, do not recognise its independence.
Thaçi’s political career came to an abrupt halt in 2020, when he resigned as president after the Kosovo Specialist Chambers confirmed an indictment against him. Thaçi was subsequently transferred to The Hague, where he stood trial alongside three other former senior KLA figures: Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi. All four defendants denied the charges.
Krasniqi was also sentenced to 25 years, Veseli to 18 and Selimi to 13, in each case including time already served. The four have been detained in The Hague since November 2020 and their trial opened on April 3, 2023.
Prosecutors accused the four men of participating in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at targeting people perceived as opponents of the KLA. The alleged victims included ethnic Serbs, Roma and Kosovo Albanians accused of collaborating with Serbian authorities or opposing the KLA.
The indictment covered alleged crimes committed at several locations across Kosovo and in Kukës and Cahan in northern Albania between at least March 1998 and September 1999.
Presiding judge Charles Smith, an American, said Thaçi had “used his position, leadership, authority and standing” to encourage the crimes and had failed to investigate or punish abuses committed by KLA fighters.
The court did not, though, convict Thaçi on every charge brought by prosecutors. The defendants were acquitted of six counts of crimes against humanity, including persecution, imprisonment, other inhumane acts, torture, murder and enforced disappearance.
The judges found that prosecutors had failed to prove the crimes formed part of a widespread or systematic attack on the civilian population, the threshold required for a conviction for crimes against humanity.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers was established in 2015 following an international agreement, a constitutional amendment in Kosovo and legislation adopted by the Kosovo Assembly. Its mandate covers war crimes, crimes against humanity and other crimes under Kosovo law allegedly committed between January 1998 and December 2000 by or against citizens of Kosovo or the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The prosecution had requested a 45-year prison sentence for each of the four defendants. Thaçi has consistently denied the allegations and is expected to appeal the judgment, as may prosecutors.
Kosovo formally applied for European Union membership on December 15, 2022, but remains a potential candidate rather than an official candidate country. Its path towards EU membership has been complicated by disputes over its status, with those five EU member states still refusing to recognise its independence.
The EU has also stressed the importance of the rule of law, judicial reforms and the normalisation of relations with Serbia as part of Kosovo’s European perspective.
The verdict has landed while Kosovo is still without a settled government, voters having gone to the polls three times since February 2025 without producing a stable majority.
