More than 27 years after the end of the Kosovo war, former prime minister and president Hashim Thaçi and three other leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have been found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to up to 25 years in prison. Thaçi and his fellow defendants faced charges including arbitrary detention, cruel treatment, torture and murder committed during Kosovo’s struggle for independence.
The guilty verdict was reached after a three-year trial in the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in the Hague. The special court was set up in 2015 to try crimes committed during the 1998-99 war, in which about 13,500 people were killed or went missing and roughly 1.5 million people were displaced.
