Prosecutors: KLA HQ Statements Evidence of Thaci's, Co-defendants' Responsibility for Crimes

Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor's Office(Photo:Wikimedia/DennisHH)

Prosecutors of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers & Specialist Prosecutor's Office claimed in their opening statement on April 3 that they would prove that Hashim Thaci and three co-defendants were guilty of crimes in Kosovo and Albania in 1998-99. As evidence that the indictees carried out a policy of crimes against all whom they had declared opponents of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the prosecutors presented statements issued by the KLA headquarters.

The prosecutors specified that the KLA in 1998-99 unlawfully imprisoned and abused "hundreds" of individuals and killed "at least 102 persons."

Acting chief prosecutor Alex Whiting said the prosecution would prove that the defendants, as leaders of the KLA HQ, had adopted and implemented a policy of targeting all whom they considered opponents, and had carried out that policy by unlawfully detaining and "subjecting them to abuse, torture, and murder."

Prosecutor Ward Ferdinandusse quoted a number of KLA HQ statements, starting with the first one in 1994, that the KLA had carried out operations against "the Serbian occupier," but also "liquidated" Albanian "collaborators and traitors."

Prosecutor James Pace stated, as one of the pieces of evidence that the indictees were directly involved in the crimes, that in June 1998 Thaci and Veseli themselves, in the presence of Selimi, took two detainees in the direction of the KLA HQ. Those detainees were never seen again alive.
In The Hague, in the morning on April 3, members of the Kosovo diaspora and Albanians from other Western states held a protest rally against the trial of the former KLA leaders.