Kosovo Guerrilla Leaders’ Orders Show War Crimes Guilt, Trial Told

Hashim Thaci (centre) with Rexhep Selimi behind him in court on Monday. Photo: EPA-EFE/Koen van Weel/Pool.

Using video footage of statements from the 1990s as well as documents found in some of the defendants' homes, lead prosecutor Alan Tieger showed the court KLA communiques and orders for arrests, which he said was evidence that the guerrilla force targeted political opponents.

'Opponents' are defined by the prosecution as people who were perceived by the KLA as "collaborating or associating" with Yugoslav forces, officials or state institutions. Tieger said that defendant Jakup Krasniqi in 1998 specifically mentioned the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, which was a rival political force in the country, as having "great tendencies to destroy the KLA".

The four defendants, Hashim Thaci, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi, and Rexhep Selimi, are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed between at least March 1998 and September 1999 during and just after the war with Serbian forces.

They are accused of having individual and command responsibility for crimes that were mainly committed against prisoners who were held at a series of detention facilities set up by the KLA in Kosovo and neighbouring Albania.

Acting deputy specialist prosecutor Ward Ferdinandusse told the court that they were responsible for the murders of 102 people and the forced disappearance of 20 others.

They all repeated their pleas of not guilty as the trial started on Monday.

The defence will seek to highlight that the KLA did not have a rigid military structure so the defendants could not have been responsible for crimes committed by guerrillas.

But acting specialist prosecutor Alex Whiting told the court that in one of...