Kosovo’s Thaci gets 25 years: A watershed for command responsibility, but questions remain

A Hague-based war crimes court has sentenced former Kosovo president Hashim Thaci to 25 years in prison for crimes committed during the 1998–99 war against Serbia, delivering a landmark verdict that simultaneously affirms and limits the doctrine of military command responsibility.

The Specialist Court, an EU-backed tribunal operating under Kosovan law, found Thaci and three other former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commanders guilty on Wednesday of a series of brutal acts: the murder of 96 people, the arbitrary detention of at least 385, and the torture and cruel treatment of more than 300 civilians, according to the DutchNews.nl report. The victims were overwhelmingly political opponents and ethnic Albanians suspected by the KLA of collaborating with Serbian forces.

The ruling carries immediate strategic weight for Kyiv. The core legal question the court wrestled with — who should be held accountable for the actions of subordinates in an irregular guerrilla force? — is one Ukrainian commanders and prosecutors are likely to confront as war crimes investigations into Russia’s invasion deepen.

Wartime command responsibility, codified after the Second World War, holds superiors liable if they knew or should have known their troops were committing atrocities and failed to prevent them. In Thaci’s case, prosecutors argued that as the KLA’s political and military leader, he bore direct responsibility for a “widespread and systematic attack on civilians.” But the judges rejected that framing in part. While convicting Thaci and his co-defendants, they cleared all four men on six counts of crimes against humanity, stating prosecutors had not proven the crimes were part of a coordinated, large-scale campaign. As Al Jazeera reported, the verdict drew a careful line: the KLA committed serious violations, but not necessarily as a matter of policy.

The distinction matters. It means the court accepted that Thaci, as commander, was criminally liable for specific acts his units carried out — the murders, detentions and tortures — but stopped short of branding the KLA’s entire war effort as a criminal enterprise. This is a narrower view of command accountability than some international lawyers had hoped for. For Ukraine, where both Russian regular forces and proxy militias have been implicated in atrocities, the precedent suggests that proving a systemic command-level conspiracy remains a high bar, even when individual battlefield crimes are well documented.

The sentencing also ignited immediate political turmoil. In The Hague, Thaci supporters clashed with riot police on the Malieveld, throwing stones and flagpoles after the verdict was read. Dutch police deployed tear gas and water cannons, according to DutchNews.nl. In Kosovo’s capital Pristina, tens of thousands rallied in defiance. Thaci, who served as prime minister and then president from 2008 to 2020, had helped establish the very court that convicted him, while serving as foreign minister in 2015. He resigned in November 2020 to face the charges and has been in custody since.

Yet the trial leaves unresolved debates that stretch back to the Gulf War and Bosnia: How far up the chain of command should accountability reach? Thaci’s 25-year sentence — well short of the 45 years prosecutors requested — suggests courts remain reluctant to equate political leadership with direct perpetration, even when the leader maintained tight control over his forces. Four other former KLA commanders were convicted: Jakup Krasniqi also got 25 years, Kadri Veseli 18, and Rexhep Selimi 13, per the DutchNews report. Both sides can appeal.

For Ukraine, the takeaway is sobering. The conflict there may generate war crimes cases against senior Russian officers and political figures. But if the Kosovan precedent holds, prosecutors will need to link individual atrocities to explicit orders or known patterns of abuse, not merely to the fact that a commander held authority. The Thaci verdict has drawn a circle around command responsibility — and for now, that circle may be smaller than some expect.

Reporting contributed by DutchNews.nl and Al Jazeera.