Reuters
At the start of the war crimes trial of Kosovo's ex-president Hashim Thaci before the special tribunal in The Hague, he denied the charges brought against him. "I am completely not guilty," Thaci said in The Hague on Monday.
He and three other former commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are accused of murders, abduction, persecution and torture during the Kosovo war. All four defendants rejected the ten charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The special tribunal, established in 2015, is specifically looking into crimes committed during the Kosovo war from 1998 to 1999. At the time, KLA rebels and Serbian forces led by then-President Slobodan Milosevic fought for control of the country. More than 13,000 people were killed during the war. In 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. However, the government in Belgrade still considers it a Serbian province.
Thaci and other KLA fighters were celebrated as guerrilla heroes in their homeland. But prosecutors in The Hague on Monday spoke of a "dark side" to the KLA leadership, which had a "clear and explicit strategy to target collaborators and perceived traitors, including political opponents". The victims had often been targeted by the KLA only because of a connection to Serbia. In their "zeal" to "eliminate" opponents, mainly ethnic Albanians had become victims, as well as some Serbs and Roma, prosecutors said. The strategy pushed by the defendants had led to the "detention, ill-treatment, torture and sometimes death" of opponents, said chief prosecutor Alex Whitin.
