The trial of former Kosovar president Hashim Thaçi, accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during and after Kosovo’s war of independence against Serbia, began on Monday 3 April in The Hague, the Netherlands. fought between 1998 and 1999.
Thaçi was formally indicted in 2020 by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a Hague-based body tasked with investigating crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army during the war. Soon after the indictment he resigned as president and was arrested and taken to prison in the Netherlands to await trial.
During the War of Independence, Thaçi had been a key leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which had fought against Serbian forces before the NATO intervention in 1999. According to the indictment, Thaçi and three other former commanders at trial with him they would be responsible, among other things, for a hundred murders of Serbs, Albanians, Kosovars and political opponents. Thaçi has always declared himself innocent.
Following Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008, Thaçi became the country’s first head of government, a position he held until 2014, and then President of Kosovo in 2016.