A European Union-backed tribunal in The Hague handed Kosovo’s former president, Hashim Thaci, a 25-year prison sentence on September 16, 2026, convicting him of war crimes committed during the 1998-99 war for independence from Serbia.
Judges at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) convicted Thaci, 58, on four counts — murder, torture, cruel treatment and arbitrary detention. Political rivals and people believed to be helping Serbian security forces made up the 96 killings for which the judges held him responsible, alongside the arbitrary detention of 385 people, the torture of 303 and the cruel treatment of 49. None of the victims, the judges said, were taking part in the fighting when the crimes occurred.
In a suit and tie, Thaci stood silently while Presiding Judge Charles Smith read out the conviction and the sentence. He has denied every charge. An appeal is open to him and to the prosecutors, who had sought a maximum term of 45 years.
Thaci’s defense team announced publicly on September 17 that it will formally submit an appeal to the Appeals Panel. The trial judgment, the team said, is filled with serious legal, factual and procedural errors that undermined the impartiality of the process, and panel members conducted questioning in a biased manner that went beyond the neutral search for truth.
Lead attorney Luka Mišetić alleged the same day that the trial panel had publicly declared Thaci was involved in the murder of Behajdin Allaqi after previously ordering all parties in the case to keep the related evidence confidential.
What the Judges Found
The panel ruled that Thaci had been a member of a joint criminal enterprise pursuing a common plan, taking a hands-on role in the offenses and urging them on while leaning on his rank and public standing, and that he had failed to investigate or punish abuses by fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). At the September 16 hearing, Smith said the former president had promoted individuals involved in crimes and had “showed a ruthless ability to remove and eliminate political impediments” to his and other commanders’ leadership. “The scale and nature of the crimes committed were very serious,” Smith said.
Much of the intelligence that led to the arrests, the judge said, “was little more than unverified rumours. Based on that information, victims were called and described as spies and collaborators and violently treated.” The American judge underlined a limit to the ruling: it passed no judgment on the legitimacy of the KLA’s cause. Nor, Smith said, did it rule on the group’s aim of independence for Kosovo, at the time a province of Serbia.
Four defendants stood trial, and the panel acquitted all four of six counts of crimes against humanity, having concluded that prosecutors fell short of proving the crimes formed part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians. A panel of three judges heard the three-year trial, which turned on how much top-level operational control the men exercised over a KLA run from the center, and on whether the abuses added up to a pattern.
The three other former KLA leaders in the dock alongside Thaci had all entered not guilty pleas. Judges sentenced Jakup Krasniqi to 25 years, Kadri Veseli to 18 years and Rexhep Selimi to 13 years, and the terms handed to Veseli and Selimi include time already spent in custody. Veseli’s lawyer, Rodney Dixon, said he would “mount a robust appeal to continue the fight to show Mr. Veseli’s innocence and to bring him home to Kosovo.”
From Commander to President
Formed in the mid-1990s, the KLA stepped up its armed operations in 1997 and 1998. Serbian forces answered with sweeping police and military operations. An estimated 13,000 people died in the war that followed, which also drove hundreds of thousands from their homes, and both sides committed crimes during the fighting. Thaci helped found the group, fought under the nom de guerre “Commander Snake” and headed its political directorate.
He was courted by Western governments during the war and after it. An invitation to the 1999 peace talks at Rambouillet in France put him in front of diplomats he charmed — then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright above all — and he came to be seen as the man who could steer Kosovo to statehood. Kosovo proclaimed its independence in 2008 and he became its inaugural prime minister. The foreign ministry was another of his posts, and he held the presidency from 2016 to 2020. His resignation came in November 2020, after the tribunal indicted him, and detention in The Hague followed that same month.
Anger in Pristina and The Hague
Thousands watched the hearing on a giant outdoor screen in the capital, Pristina, and the length of the sentence drew shock, with chants of “UCK” — the Albanian-language initials of the Kosovo Liberation Army — rising from the crowd. Hundreds of them went on to march across the Kosovar capital, which dozens of riot officers had been posted to guard. Masked protesters later hurled stones at the perimeter wall of the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) outside Pristina and broke several windows. Foreign peacekeeping forces had agreed contingency arrangements with Kosovo police should the protests turn violent, according to the police, while the United States advised its citizens to avoid crowds.
Hundreds of supporters gathered in a park close to the courthouse in The Hague and briefly clashed with Dutch riot police, who said on X that two people had been detained.
Support for the four men had been on open display over the weekend before the verdict, when thousands filled central Pristina carrying Albanian flags and banners declaring them innocent. In the village of Klecka, a bonfire ceremony honoring KLA members was held on September 11.
In an official statement on September 17, Mišetić conveyed a message from Thaci to Kosovo’s citizens and the international community. Translated from Albanian, it read: “Hashim Thaçi wishes to express his most sincere thanks for the great support that he, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi have received from the people of Kosovo and internationally, and calls on the citizens of Kosovo to remain calm in the face of yesterday’s injustice.”
Kosovo Foreign Minister Glauk Konjufca condemned the outcome as “a terrible judgment for Kosovo, for our people and for our liberation war.” Edi Rama, the Albanian Prime Minister, published a picture of a circle of barbed wire laid across a map of Europe, captioned with a single word, reported in Albanian as “Marre” — shame — and rendered by Reuters as “Unbelievable.” Specialist Prosecutor Kimberly West welcomed the ruling. “Certain individuals exploited those war circumstances to commit grave crimes, and it is to the credit of Kosovo that those individuals are now being held accountable,” she said in a statement.
Thaci remains a hero to many Kosovo Albanians, while the court that convicted him enjoys little public backing among Kosovo’s population. Prosecutors have also brought separate charges against him of intimidating witnesses, to which he has pleaded not guilty, and that case is due to go to trial later this month.
