PRISTINA: Tens of thousands of people gathered on Saturday in Kosovo’s capital to demand the acquittal of former President Hashim Thaci, days ahead of a longawaited war crimes verdict against the ex-guerrilla leader.
AKosovo court based in The Hague will on Wednesday issue a ruling that will end a more than five-year legal fight for Thaci, the former political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) who resigned as the country’s president when he was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2020. Prosecutors allege that Thaci and fellow former fighters Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi were responsible for a campaign of persecution involving murder, torture, enforced disappearance and unlawful detention during and immediately after the war with Serbian forces in 1998-1999. But inside Kosovo, the men are widely seen as wartime heroes and Thaci in particular as a key independence figure for Europe’s youngest democracy.
On Saturday, chanting ‘UCK’ (KLA), protesters carried photos of the four with inscriptions: ‘In the name of the people, declare them innocent’, ‘Liberators, bring them home’, and ‘Kosovo is waiting.
Addressing the crowd, leader of war veterans, Hysni Gucati said that ‘Kosovo’s freedom was won through sacrifice.’ ‘No courtroom will be able to erase this truth.
The crowds marched to the city centre, where a large screen has for weeks counted down to sentencing day.
‘They should definitely be released because they fought for the freedom of Kosovo and did not commit any crimes. They are liberators,’ Shyhrete Kelmendi, a high school economics teacher, said.
Limon Dervishaj, who has been working in Switzerland for 40 years, came specifically to participate in the demonstrations. ‘The trial was purely political against the Kosovo Liberation Army,’ he said.-AFP