Eurasia Press & News
Created in 2015, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers war crimes court was supposed to help foster post-war reconciliation between ethnic Albanians and Serbs. It never stood a chance.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague drove another nail in the coffin of ‘reconciliation’ last month when it released a decision granting the prosecution’s request to admit into evidence multiple documents from Serbian authorities in the long-running case against Hashim Thaci and three others for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The court did not describe the contents of the documents, but explained that their value, if any, would be determined during the trial, scheduled to resume on September 15.
The defence will have the right to attack the credibility of these documents in the hope of persuading the court that they are unreliable and should not be given any credence by the court. But the court’s decision admitting the documents, while perhaps routine in the legal sense, caused outrage in Kosovo.
On August 7, thousands of protesters poured into downtown Pristina led by the Kosovo War Veterans’ Association, along with several political leaders, including former guerrillas Fatmir Limaj and Ramush Haradinaj, all denouncing the court and its decision.
Edi Rama, prime minister of neighbouring Albania, weighed in on Facebook, criticising the Kosovo parliament for not raising its voice against the court’s alleged violations of the rights of Thaci and his co-accused. “Freedom has a name and it’s not guilty,” he said.
And in the United States, Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions and a frequent critic of the court, said Kosovo’s sovereignty would be better served if the country handled its own judicial matters, rather than putting them in the hands of foreigners.
There is a lengthy backdrop to the present-day situation, and the court’s decision was only the latest in a long-running, simmering conflict between KLA veterans and their supporters on one hand, and the Specialist Chambers on the other.
Reconciliation was one of the most important reasons given for the creation of the Chambers in 2015, the primary purpose being to prosecute former KLA fighters for alleged crimes committed during and immediately after the 1998-99 war against Serbia. The KLA’s fight to end a decade of repression had triggered a brutal response from Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic before 11 weeks of NATO air strikes wrested control of Kosovo from Belgrade.
“By dealing with its past and ensuring justice for the victims, Kosovo can achieve reconciliation and build a better future,” the US and European Union said in a joint statement on August 4, 2015, immediately after Kosovo lawmakers reluctantly established the court.
The current saga shows, however, that reconciliation may prove impossible.
Deck stacked against reconciliation
What does reconciliation mean in the context of transitional justice in post-conflict countries like Kosovo?
It includes such features as holding to account the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity; establishing the truth about what really happened based on credible evidence; fostering an acceptance among the general population as to the truth; supporting the victims; and rebuilding social cohesion based on a generally accepted historical record, among others.
Some of these benchmarks will likely be achieved by the court: the perpetrators of crimes will be held to account; and their victims will receive support. But what about the other features?
Even before the creation of the Chambers, there were indications that reconciliation in Kosovo would be difficult under any circumstances.
In 2012, while I was working as an international criminal judge for the EU’s rule of law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, Haradinaj was acquitted of war crimes for the second time by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, in The Hague.
Posters of him were plastered all over the Kosovo capital and he returned as a war hero and liberator, rather than a supposed war criminal.
Three years later, in August 2015, the Chambers were created under enormous pressure from the US and EU. It took Kosovo’s parliament two tries to pass the necessary constitutional amendment and adopt the required legislation, as war veterans and members of the public protested in the streets.
Key leaders, including Thaci, who was deputy prime minister at the time, believed they had no choice; failure to act would mean losing the support of their international benefactors.
The strong-arming, however, did not bode well for future reconciliation. Nor did the court’s mandate.
The mandate was to prosecute the alleged perpetrators of war crimes from the ranks of the KLA, and only the KLA, between January 1, 1998, and December 31, 2000, during and shortly after the brutal war with Serbia. The one-sided nature of the court was a key reason for the initial strong opposition and remains so today now that the court is well underway. The ICTY, in contrast, prosecuted both Serbs and Albanians, as did EULEX.
Located on the North Sea coast of the Netherlands many hundreds of miles from Kosovo, and staffed exclusively by internationals with no Kosovo representation, the court by definition excludes any sense of local ownership and participation, also undermining the possibility of reconciliation.
The near universal sentiment in Kosovo was, and is, that the war against Serbia was a just war in defence of Kosovo and its Albanian majority against Serbian murder, ethnic cleansing and purported genocide, and that KLA veterans were war heroes and liberators, not war criminals.
Thaci would later call the court’s founding an “historical injustice” that his government agreed to only as the “price for its liberty”. He compared it to creating a court to prosecute Jews persecuted by the Nazis in World War Two.
So, from the very outset, the deck was stacked against any notion of reconciliation. And things have only gotten worse with the passage of time.
Popularity of war heroes
In late 2017, dozens of Kosovo legislators tried in vain to overturn the law that established the court, to the fury of the international community which threatened severe ramifications.
The court survived this challenge and finally issued its indictments against these four defendants in November 2020, creating more opposition.
They were all high-ranking and popular KLA veterans: Hashim Thaci, Kadri Veseli, Jakub Krasniqi, and Rexhep Selimi. Indeed, Thaci at the time was president of the country.
These defendants have been in detention for almost five years, and the court has repeatedly denied their motions for release. This was another issue highlighted by the protesters on August 7.
Relations with the war veterans and their supporters soured further when two senior members of the War Veterans’ Association, Hysni Gucati and Nasim Haradinaj, were convicted of obstruction of justice in 2022 and jailed by the court after they shared with the media confidential documents leaked from the court and sent to them anonymously.
The people who stole and delivered the documents have never been identified.
The trial in the Thaci et al case began in April 2023, after two-and-a-half years of pre-trial detention, and the prosecution rested its case two long years later. The prosecution’s theory of the case is that these individuals committed heinous crimes while engaged in a so-called joint criminal enterprise. The case for the defendants will commence on September 15, followed by likely appellate proceedings. The end is nowhere in sight.
Aware of its low standing in Kosovo, the leadership of the Chambers has pursued a vigorous outreach programme to persuade the public that the court is just and fair, and that it is prosecuting only individuals and not the KLA itself, a subtlety lost on many of the court’s critics who believe the court is trying to rewrite the glorious history of the KLA’s fight for liberation.
The actual impact of the 185 public-awareness events that the programme has held since 2018 is questionable.
Indeed, court president Ekaterina Trendafilova has personally attended outreach events in Kosovo on three occasions between 2022 and 2025, and each time she has had to adjust or even cancel her schedule because of protests and safety concerns.
It is beyond mere conjecture, of course, that Thaci and his co-accused will be found guilty of at least some of the charges against them. And if not, the outcome will be perceived by the international community as a total waste of time and money.
Ironically, however, acquittals stand more chance than convictions of actually fostering reconciliation, as was demonstrated in 2012 when Ramush Haradinaj returned home a war hero from the ICTY.
If indeed there are convictions, this will play directly into the hands of Serbian officials who would like nothing more than to claim that Kosovo’s war of liberation was nothing more than a joint criminal enterprise rather than a fight for freedom, further inflaming local passions.
All things considered, reconciliation has been proven to be nothing more than a naive pipe dream among those international officials who insisted on the creation of the court; its demise is virtually certain.
However, it is not my intention to denigrate the court or its employees, all of whom I’m sure are acting professionally in exceedingly difficult circumstances. The fact remains, however, that there are persuasive reasons why reconciliation, one of the court’s major goals, will not be achieved.
