40 minutes with Hashim Thaçi in The Hague: no “spiciness”, but reflection on the Special Chambers, relations with the US and the paradox of the 5-year detention of a leader who went to trial himself
By Daniel SERWER
The other day I spent my allotted 40 minutes with former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi in the international section of the Dutch prison in The Hague. I wanted to renew an old friendship. It is well known in Kosovo that we had a falling out shortly before he voluntarily went to The Hague to face trial. I also wanted to better understand the reality behind the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, which are conducting his trial. So I also met with the tribunal’s spokesperson, Michael Doyle, whom I know from his excellent service to High Representative Inzko in Bosnia.
Readers beware. If you are looking for any “spicy” details about what Hashim told me, read no further. Our conversations have always been private in the past, and that will remain so. Except for the prison official who was present to listen, as per the rules. I will respect the confidentiality of what Hashim said. But he has always respected my right to express my opinion publicly, and I am sure he still does.
PREHISTORY
Hashim and I met whenever I went to Kosovo or he came to the United States. This habit began in 1999, when he was part of the Kosovo Albanian leadership that the United States Institute of Peace brought to a resort in Lansdowne, Virginia. We did this because violence between Albanians was increasing after the NATO/Yugoslav war. We feared it could lead to civil war. Crimes, of course, had occurred after the war.
Hashimi has always attributed the Kosovo Liberation Army’s turn towards politics to that very meeting in Lansdowne. It included almost all of Kosovo’s major political, civil society and media leaders after the war. The declaration that emerged from that meeting became a roadmap for subsequent political, social and economic efforts. This initiative led to a meeting two years later with the Kosovo Serb leadership at Airlie House, as well as a major campaign against violence, in which Hashimi played a key role.
RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES
At the failed Rambouillet talks in late 1998, Hashimi was undoubtedly one of the Americans’ favorites. As the political spokesman for the KLA, he finally managed to convince the various commanders to sign the proposed agreement. The Serbian refusal led to NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
But after the war, he neither rose quickly nor did he have unconditional American support. The Americans were alarmed when Hashimi appointed new mayors in Kosovo, claiming this authority as “prime minister” of a “provisional government” created a few months earlier. The mayors he appointed replaced those that “president” Rugova had installed during the decade of Serbian oppression. We warned Hashimi at Lansdowne that these “mayors” would not be able to meet expectations and would be held responsible for failures in the first municipal elections.
They were held a year after the war. The Americans wanted to avoid the mistake made in Bosnia, where national elections were held only a year after the war – and ended up returning all the leaders of the warring parties to power. In Kosovo, municipal elections toppled many of the KLA leaders, just as the Americans had predicted. It would take years for Hashim’s Democratic Party of Kosovo to recover. Hashim played important roles during the UN protectorate, but his first taste of executive power came in 2008, when he led the declaration of independence and then became prime minister.
LAW COURTS
Thaçi ascended to the presidency in 2016. By then, Americans and Europeans were pushing hard for a tribunal to try allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity that had occurred largely after the end of the war in 1999. The most shocking were allegations that the KLA had kidnapped Serbs, taken them to northern Albania, removed their organs, and killed them. I had heard these allegations shortly after the war, but the journalist who mentioned them to me said he could not meet journalistic standards to publish them. The 2011 Council of Europe report that made them public was no better.
But when US prosecutor Clint Williamson reported in 2014 that there was sufficient evidence to indict members of the KLA, diplomatic pressure became uncontrollable. As president, Hashimi used his influence to persuade MPs to approve a constitutional amendment that would create a Kosovo court, but one that would be based in The Hague and staffed entirely by internationals. I also spoke in support of it, believing that it would deal primarily with allegations of organ trafficking. The Kosovo Specialist Chambers became operational in 2017, in a facility that Norway paid to renovate and is funded by the European Union.
I never imagined the “Special Chambers” would do what they did. In 2020, they indicted Hashim and three of his KLA comrades for “joint criminal enterprise” for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity – not to mention organ trafficking. He resigned as president and went to The Hague, where he has been imprisoned ever since: 2.5 years in pre-trial detention and now another 2.5 years on trial.
WHAT’S PROBLEMFUL WITH THIS VIEW?
There are many things that are wrong – or rather, the way I see this picture.
First, the deception of the pretext. The Kosovo parliament believed, as I did, that the main focus of the tribunal would be the organ trafficking charges. The defense raised this point in court and lost, because there are other charges in the Marty report. But for a layman – like me – if you want the “client” to remain satisfied, you don’t sell him one thing and hand him another. Of course, the tribunal has no reason to care about me as a “client,” but in a way I am. Such tribunals should provide justice, not revenge based on deception. No liberation movement in the future will accept such a tribunal.
Second, the nature of the charges. Accusing the entire political and military leadership of the KLA of “joint criminal enterprise” gives the impression that it is criminalizing the revolt against Serbian oppression itself. Of course, the KLA was illegal under Serbian law, just as the American revolution was illegal under British law. But the US and NATO supported the KLA because they believed the cause was just. The tribunal says this is not a question of rebellion, but of concrete acts. But try explaining that to someone in Kosovo (or Serbia).
Third, the court’s jurisdiction does not include Serbia, where crimes were also committed after the war. The three Bytyqi brothers were killed there after the war, as were others. If diplomats had insisted that the tribunal deal with those crimes as well, perhaps today we would either not have a tribunal at all, or we would have one that would be viewed more sympathetically in Kosovo. I blame myself for not raising this issue at the time.
THE MOST IMPORTANT
Fourth, and my main complaint today, is the absurd length of time that Hashim and his comrades have been held in custody and during the trial. The principle of “innocent until proven guilty” should not remain an empty slogan. All of these people resigned and went to The Hague voluntarily – something that their opponents in Serbia did not do. How can five years of imprisonment (in a maximum security prison, from what I saw) be justified without even knowing whether someone is guilty or not?
The official answer is fear of witness intimidation or manipulation, which the tribunal has said has been a problem. I do not accept that as a sufficient explanation. The tribunal should have released these men long ago. None of them would have escaped. They could all have been supervised without being locked up in The Hague.
GUILTY OR INNOCENT
I do not know whether these KLA leaders are guilty or innocent. I have not read all the trial records. Even if I had, the responsibility lies with the tribunal, not me. I only hope that the decision will not be influenced by the expectations of European governments to receive some punishment in return for the hundreds of millions of euros they have invested in this process.
One last story about Hashim, old enough that the US government must have declassified it by now. Twenty-six years ago, in Lansdowne, I met him and one of the KLA commanders in the morning. To make small talk, I said that it must have been strange for them to be at a luxury resort in Virginia, when only a few weeks earlier they had been fighting in the mountains of Kosovo. Hashim looked at the commander sitting with him, who frowned, and said to me, “I was never actually a fighter. I was the political spokesman.” I think that at that moment Hashim was under a lot of pressure to tell me the truth.