“I have been criticised and am still criticised in Kosovo for supporting the establishment of this court,” Kosovo’s former President, Hashim Thaci, said in his closing remarks at the end of his trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague last week.
The so-called Special Court was set up in August 2015 under international pressure by the Kosovo parliament. Thaci, then Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, urged Kosovo MPs to vote for its creation – despite the internal political strife over the proposal to back a court tasked with trying former Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, fighters for alleged war crimes.
It turned out that the defendants would include Thaci himself.
More than a decade later, in his closing statement, Thaci recalled that “critics say this court aims to criminalise the [KLA’s] fight for freedom and the idea of independence [for Kosovo]. I did not believe it at the time when I voted for it, but I sincerely hope that time will prove that I was right and the critics were wrong.”