Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi will begin his trial in The Hague next Monday for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 1998–1999 war of independence against Serbian forces. Thaçi, 54, a former KLA fighter, pleaded not guilty in November 2020 before the Kosovo Special Court (KSC). The KSC also indicted three other suspects who are on trial alongside him for nearly 100 murders, enforced disappearances, persecution, and torture, allegedly committed between March 1998 and September 1999.
The trial represents an opportunity for victims to learn what really happened after so many years, according to Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director of Human Rights Watch. Thaçi, who has been president of Kosovo since 2016, has always defended his innocence and accused international justice of “rewriting history,” although he has promised to work closely with justice. The Kosovo war between Serb forces and Kosovo Albanian independence fighters left 13,000 dead, most of them Albanians, and ended when a Western airstrike campaign in 1999 forced Serb forces to withdraw. Thaçi has been a central figure in Kosovo’s political life for two decades, and his trial is considered one of the most important in the region since the end of the war.