Kosovo president Thaci charged with war crimes

Kosovo president Hashim Thaci (pic) has been charged with 10 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the country’s conflict in the 1990s, a tribunal in The Hague said.

Wartime intelligence chief and former parliamentary speaker Kadri Veseli is also accused of war crimes by specialist prosecutors before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC). Veseli has denied the accusations.

The charges against both men were brought on April 24 but not revealed publicly at the time, prosecutors said.

“The indictment alleges that Hashim Thaci, Kadri Veseli and the other charged suspects are criminally responsible for nearly 100 murders,” they said on Wednesday.

The accused are also facing other charges such as enforced disappearance of persons, persecution and torture.

The crimes alleged in the indictment “involved hundreds of known victims of Kosovo Albanian, Serb, Roma, and other ethnicities and include political opponents”.

Prosecutors said they decided to make the accusations public because Thaci and Veseli had made “repeated attempts” to obstruct the KSC.

The charges will now be put before a pre-trial judge at the KSC for a decision to confirm them, the prosecutors said.

Thaci was preparing for a summit at the White House on Saturday with Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic and local media reports suggested he had already left for the United States.

But US special envoy to Serbia and Kosovo Richard Grenell, who organised the White House meeting, said in a tweet that Thaci had cancelled his trip to the summit following the charges in The Hague.

“I respect his decision not to attend the discussions until the legal issues of those allegations are settled,” Grenell said.

Talks will now go ahead with Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti, who has moved to ease friction with Serbia. Thaci’s office did not specify his whereabouts.

The tribunal was established in 2015 to investigate crimes by independence-seeking ethnic Albanian guerrillas against mainly Serb civilians during the 1998–1999 war.

The conflict pitted Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas seeking independence for the southern Serbian province of Kosovo against Serbia’s forces, who withdrew from the territory after an 11-week Nato bombing campaign.