Kosovo government meeting on October 14, 2026. Photo: BIRN.
Kosovo’s government on Wednesday approved the establishment of a working group to support the four former Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, leaders appealing against their war-crimes convictions, issued by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on September 16.
“We consider the first-instance verdict against the former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army to be legally and morally unjust, as well as factually and historically inaccurate; therefore, we are working to have it corrected on appeal,” Prime Minister Albin Kurti said.
Kurti said the working group would be led by First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Glauk Konjufca, and would include institutional and parliamentary representation. “With this decision, we are acting on our pledge to use the means at our disposal to strive for justice and to defend the historical truth of our liberation war,” he said.
Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, former parliament speakers Kadri Veseli and Jakup Krasniqi, and former MP Rexhep Selimi were found guilty of arbitrary detention, cruel treatment, torture and murder during the Kosovo war from April 1998 to June 20, 1999, in Kosovo and several locations in Albania.
Thaci and Krasniqi were each sentenced to 25 years in prison, Veseli to 18 and Selimi to 13 years in prison. The defence teams have announced they are preparing a legal challenge.
The verdict triggered protests in Kosovo, which turned violent on October 5 as protesters demanded that parliament adopt law changes to curtail the jurisdiction of the court. MPs voted for the changes on October 6. Critics, however, claim the changes, which are yet to be enforced, will not necessarily have an impact.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers is a hybrid court, part of Kosovo’s judiciary but located in The Hague and staffed by internationals. The court was established in 2015 under pressure from Kosovo’s Western allies, with Thaci as one of its main supporters.
A month after the verdict convicting Thaci, criticism of the Specialist Chambers has continued unabated. On Wednesday, Kosovo’s Ombudsperson, Naim Qelaj, held a discussion event in Pristina to demand external oversight of the EU-funded court.
Qelaj claimed that the court “has not been subject to democratic monitoring and control by the institutions of the Republic of Kosovo, creating a lack of transparency and accountability towards the citizens and institutions of Kosovo”.
He said it should report to the Kosovo authorities and that the Ombudsperson institution should be able to have access to its work.
“I don’t want to believe the Council of the EU and other donor countries are interested in this court continuing with such standards,” Qelaj said, announcing that he had sent his concerns to parliamentary speaker Albulena Haxhiu, Prime Minister Kurti, the president of the Specialist Chambers, Ekaterina Trendafilova, and Kosovo’s President Justina Shiroka Pula, as well as the Council of the EU.
BIRN contacted the court and the Council of the EU for a comment but received no response by the time of publication.