Judges on the Kosovo tribunal have convicted a former Kosovo Liberation Military (KLA) commander who ran a jail the place torture passed off in the course of the 1998-99 independence battle with Serbia.
In its first-ever struggle crimes verdict, the court docket on Friday sentenced Salih Mustafa to 26 years in jail for struggle crimes, together with homicide and torture in a detention centre the place prisoners, largely fellow Kosovo Albanians who had been political opponents of the KLA, had been overwhelmed and tortured each day.
Head Choose Mappie Veldt-Foglia stated the decision was a “milestone” for the court docket, which was arrange in 2015, and “constitutes the primary struggle crimes judgment of this tribunal”.
“The panel sentences you to a single sentence of 26 years of imprisonment,” she instructed Mustafa, who wore a gray swimsuit and blue tie and stood impassively in the course of the verdict.
Judges discovered Mustafa personally took half within the beatings and torture of at the least two prisoners and allowed his subordinates to mistreat one other so badly that the prisoner later died.
Mustafa, 50, had denied the fees and his attorneys accused prosecution witnesses of fabricating their tales. Either side have 30 days to enchantment the choice.
Worldwide tribunal
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a Kosovo court docket seated within the Netherlands and staffed by worldwide judges and attorneys, was set as much as deal with instances underneath Kosovo regulation towards former KLA fighters.
The court docket is separate from the United Nations tribunal for the previous Yugoslavia, which was additionally positioned in The Hague the place it tried and convicted Serbian officers for struggle crimes dedicated within the Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts.
Greater than 13,000 individuals are believed to have died in the course of the 1998-99 rebellion in Kosovo when it was nonetheless a part of Serbia underneath then-President Slobodan Milosevic.
The preventing ended after NATO air raids on Serbian forces, and Kosovo declared independence in 2008 – though Belgrade doesn’t recognise it’s independence.
The decision got here at a delicate time, as ethnic tensions have flared once more in Kosovo almost a quarter-century after the struggle, with attackers exchanging gunfire with police on the weekend.
‘Burnt, electrocuted, stabbed’
Judges discovered that Mustafa, who was arrested in 2020 whereas working as an adviser at Kosovo’s defence ministry, ran a unit of the KLA within the Zllash area east of Pristina in the course of the struggle.
His group stored at the least six folks, who had been accused of collaborating with Serbs, “in barns appropriate for animals, in deplorable circumstances with livestock excrement mendacity round”, Veldt-Foglia stated.
Prisoners had been compelled to sleep in puddles, denied meals for 2 or three days at a time, and after they requested for water, the KLA troopers “urinated upon them saying: ‘right here’s water for you’”.
“Detainees had been overwhelmed, hit with baseball bats, iron and rubber batons, they had been burnt, electrocuted, stabbed, kicked punched and slapped,” the decide stated.
Mustafa personally interrogated two detainees, subjecting one to a mock execution and beating him “throughout his physique” and he was additionally current whereas his troopers abused different prisoners.
One sufferer was left in a “near-to-death” state and denied medical care.
He was later discovered useless, with judges saying the mistreatment and lack of support contributed to his dying, whereas he additionally had gunshot wounds that would have both been inflicted by KLA rebels or advancing Serb troops.
However Mustafa’s actions “successfully equalled a call to kill the homicide sufferer, as at that stage he was denied any probability of survival”, the decide stated.
‘Local weather of worry and intimidation’
The decide stated she hoped the ruling would “additional reconciliation” in Kosovo.
However she famous that there was a “local weather of worry and intimidation” surrounding the trial, with the court docket having jailed two KLA veterans final yr for intimidating witnesses.
Kosovo reluctantly handed a regulation to permit the creation of the court docket after a 2010 Council of Europe report alleged atrocities by KLA forces.
These had gone unpunished, at the same time as plenty of Serbians have been convicted by different courts over the wars that ripped aside Yugoslavia within the Nineteen Nineties.