Kosovo separatist leader convicted over killings and torture
Former president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi has been sentenced by a Hague court to 25 years in prison.
The ten charges against him included 96 murders of political opponents and people declared to be accomplices of the Serbian government, as well as torture, cruel treatment and unlawful imprisonment.
Thaçi, together with his associates Jakup Krasniqi and Kadri Veseli, as well as former Self-Determination MP Rexhep Selimi, was arrested in early November 2020. Prosecutors had sought sentences of up to 45 years in prison for the defendants.
European justice has caught up with the Kosovo separatists, whose hands are steeped in blood, only almost three decades after the conflict. For ideological reasons, after the war the main blame was placed above all on the Serbs.
One of them, Colonel General Ratko Mladić, recently died in prison in the same Hague where he was serving a life sentence. His funeral with military honours in Belgrade caused outrage in Brussels.
