Kurti calls Thaci verdict injustice, vows appeal

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti today called the first-instance verdict against four former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) an “unacceptable injustice” and announced that Pristina will seek to have the ruling of the Specialist Chambers in The Hague changed on appeal. He delivered the message in a video address, in which he also said the Government of Kosovo would keep institutionally backing Hashim Thaci, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi throughout the entire appeals process.

Earlier that day, the Specialist Chambers sentenced Thaci and Krasniqi to 25 years in prison each, Veseli to 18 years and Selimi to 13 years, as Srpske Vesti reported as soon as the verdict was announced. The ruling is not final.

Kurti said, as reported by B92:

“The verdict may formally have been handed down in the name of the people of Kosovo, but this empty formula should not be confused with the will of the people. This verdict must be changed and corrected in the appeals process, and as soon as possible. In these difficult moments, we stand with the families of the former KLA leaders and all their fellow liberation fighters.”

According to the KoSSev portal, this was an address Kurti gave in the evening, after the verdict had already become public earlier in the day. N1 and B92 do not specify the time of publication. In the part of the address carried by KoSSev, Kurti repeated the same message even more explicitly, saying the verdict “must be changed and corrected in the appeals process, and as soon as possible.”

What Did the Court Actually Decide?

Kurti singled out as the key part of the ruling the fact that all four men were acquitted on all six counts of the indictment for crimes against humanity, with the panel finding that prosecutors had not proven beyond reasonable doubt that there had been a widespread or systematic attack on the civilian population. In his view, this means the verdict does not call into question either the legitimacy of the KLA or the reasons for its founding.

At the same time, according to the verdict summary, all four were found guilty of four war crimes: unlawful or arbitrary detention of 385 people, cruel treatment of at least 49 people, torture of at least 303 people and the murder of at least 96 people. Kurti said these are precisely the findings on which the appeal will rely most heavily.

Kosovo’s prime minister went a step further and challenged the court’s mandate itself, arguing that justice was being served on only one side of the war.

“When only members of one ethnic community sit in the defendants’ dock, while the state apparatus that carried out massacres, deportations and genocidal crimes remains outside the court’s jurisdiction, the inevitable impression created is one of single-ethnicity justice,” Kurti said, according to KoSSev.

Kurti tied that framing directly to the history of the case, which he laid out at length in the rest of his address.

Historical Context and Disputed Allegations

Kurti devoted much of his address to the origins of the process that led to the establishment of the Specialist Chambers. He recalled that it all began on April 15, 2008, when a draft resolution on alleged illegal trafficking in human organs in Kosovo was submitted to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), first signed by Russian lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev, with Serbian delegate Milos Aligrudic among the signatories. Kurti stressed that prosecutors were never able to substantiate the allegations tied to the so called Yellow House and organ trafficking with enough evidence to bring them into the indictment.

Kurti also noted that the defense, which presented evidence from September to December of last year, called former US diplomat Christopher Hill and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley Clark as witnesses. According to Kurti, their testimony challenged the claim of a centralized KLA command that allegedly controlled every action on the ground.

The prime minister also said institutional support for the convicted men would not waver:

“Kosovo will continue to support Hashim Thaci, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi throughout the appeals process, with full, dignified and institutional protection.”

He did not elaborate on what that protection would involve in practice.

Protest Outside EULEX Headquarters

While Kurti was preparing his address, Kosovo police detained one person at a protest outside EULEX headquarters in Kosovo Polje. Ramush Haradinaj called on the demonstrators not to cause unrest, while Kurti warned in his address that the verdict “must not be the point where everything ends,” pointing to the date, September 16, 2026.

The appeals process before the Appeals Panel has yet to begin, and the deadline for the defense to file its appeal has not been announced. That is a question Pristina and Hague officials will still have to answer in the coming weeks.