President quits, facing charges for war crimes
PRISTINA, Kosovo — The president of Kosovo, who served as a guerrilla leader during Kosovo’s war for independence from Serbia in the late 1990s, resigned Thursday and will face charges for war crimes and crimes against humanity at a special court based in The Hague.
President Hashim Thaci said he decided to relinquish his post “to protect the integrity of the presidency of Kosovo” and to preserve the historical truth of which side was the perpetrator, and which the victim, in the conflict that killed more than 10,000 people.
“We are a freedomloving people and not vengeful,” 52yearold Thaci said at a news conference in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. “That is why no claim may rewrite history. Kosovo has been the victim. Serbia has been the aggressor.”
Thaci was indicted in April along with nine other former rebel leaders by a special Kosovo court and associated prosecutor’s office based in The Hague, Netherlands, which were set up five years ago to investigate and try former ethnic Albanian rebel leaders for alleged war crimes.
The charges, which were made public in June, include murder, enforced disappearances, persecution and torture. A pretrial judge had six months to decide whether to uphold the indictment and ruled to do so, a decision that precipitated the timing of the president’s resignation.
Most of the people who died in the 19981999 war in Kosovo were ethnic Albanians, and 1,641 people are still unaccounted for. A 78day NATO air campaign against Serbian troops ended the fighting.
Among others charged with committing crimes during and after the war is Kadri Veseli, a former parliament speaker and an opposition party leader, who said he planned to travel to the The Hague on Thursday and was resigning from “all public political activities.”
Both Thaci and Veseli have denied committing any crimes. They and another indicted former KLA fighter were taken by plane to the Netherlands later Thursday.
Thaci, a commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army during the war, said he was proud to have belonged to that force, calling it “the most sublime value of the Albanian nation.”
He called the indictment “the smallest price we have to pay for the freedom of our people.”
“No one may judge our fight for freedom,“the government said, adding that the KLA “fought for the liberation of our country, to protect the house and not in a foreign land, and as such it has the support of the international community.”
Thaci held a ceremony at his office to hand over his presidential duties to parliament speaker Vjosa Osmani, who will serve as acting president. The government said the “constitution and the laws in power guarantee a clear transition of powers and exercising the responsibilities without any institutional vacuum.”
Osmani, 38, the second woman to serve as head of state out of postwar Kosovo’s six presidents, called for unity in a late afternoon speech that held Serbia responsible for the lives lost during the war.
Thaci was elected president in February 2016. His current term ends in April, when the national Assembly of Kosovo was expected to elect a new president.
Amnesty International’s Balkans researcher, Jelena Sesar, said the indictment of
Thaci and the nine others would give hope to “thousands of victims of the Kosovo war who have waited for more than two decades to find out the truth about the horrific crimes committed against them and their loved ones.”
KosovoSerbia ties are still tense 21 years after war’s end, despite nine years of negotiations mediated by the European Union.
In 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia, a move that Serbia refuses to recognize.