On Nov 3, 2020, President Hashim Thaci of Kosovo, and three senior members of his administration, namely Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi, were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a special court seated in the Netherlands.
Their alleged crimes were not committed yesterday or even a year ago, but more than a quarter of a century ago, during the fight for the freedom of Kosovo.
At the time, the four were senior members of the General Staff of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – a fledging group fighting against the atrocities of the Serbian regime of President Slobodan Milosevic.
The four were accused of participating in a joint criminal enterprise and/or aided and abetted the crimes they were charged with and held responsible as superiors for crimes committed by their subordinates.
The crimes listed included torture, murder, illegal detention and cruel treatment of persons. The crimes were claimed to have taken place over 40 different parts of Kosovo as well as in northern Albania.
Last month, the trial of the four accused commenced and is expected to hear from 300 witnesses that may last for two years. Four legal teams represent the accused. More importantly, one of the lead counsels is a Malaysian female international criminal lawyer.
The alleged crimes were committed during a period of war. It was a time when the Serbs, under Milosevic, sought to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of the Kosovo Albanians.
Beginning in 1991, Albanians were fired from their jobs. There were no Albanian policemen, doctors or civil servants. The only Albanian language television was shut down. Albanian youths were not allowed to play football in stadiums or gyms. There was organised poisoning of Albanian students in schools.
The Kosovo Albanian population was subjected to brutal violence and oppression. The Serbs committed hundreds of massacres where more than 12,000 Albanians were killed, without sparing the children, women and the elderly.
The Serbs raped women and children, burned their homes and looted their property. Half of the population was forced to flee. The accused were among those who stayed behind in defence of their people and their freedom.
The defence lawyers argued that the KLA was a volunteer army where people could come and leave as they pleased. They were farmers, students, teachers and lawyers who were never trained as soldiers. The volunteers directed their efforts to fighting the military enemy, not the civilian population.
The KLA was disorganised and under-resourced. Unpaid, they had few and inferior weapons, poor means of communication and their uniforms were a mix of the camouflage army uniforms sent by the diaspora living in Germany, Switzerland and the United States.
The Yugoslav armed forces on the other hand had over 100,000 personnel supported by as many as 400,000 reserves. The Serbs had planes, tanks, rockets and were fighting against the fledging volunteers who had barely carried a gun before.
Milosevic's refusal to back down compelled the United Nations Security Council to pass Resolution 1199, expressing grave concern over the excessive and discriminate use of force by the Serbian forces and demanded the withdrawal of their security units.
The West interfered and the Nato bombing campaign started from March 24, 1999 to June 9, yet the ethnic cleansing continued during the bombing.
During that period, there was violence, revenge and settling of old scores, general lawlessness and the absence of post-war institutions. The defence lawyers maintained that throughout the indictment period there was no effective command and control of the KLA.
The spring and October 1998 Serb offensives totally destroyed the KLA brigades and crippled their fighting capability. The international community established the Kosovo Force (KFOR) and United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to take over the administration of Kosovo, hold free elections and build democratic institutions.
Into this mix, the four accused worked intensively with the international community. They represented the Kosovo-Albanians at the peace talks in Rambouillet and Paris in 1999.
Thaci worked intensively with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, US Senator Bob Dole and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to bring peace and stability in Kosovo. Together with KFOR and UNMIK, Thaci completed the demilitarisation of the KLA and set up a multi-ethnic police force.
Yet, for their role in bringing peace to Kosovo, Thaci and his three colleagues were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
I was in Kosovo a few months before the trial started, getting the sense of the places where the alleged war crimes took place. On my way back to The Hague, the Kosovar taxi driver asked where I was from. When told, he said he had never heard of Malaysia and that it must be a very small country.
I told him that Malaysia was 30 times the size of Kosovo with a population that was 18 times more. Malaysia was also the first Asian country to recognise the independence of Kosovo in 2008.
I didn't tell him though that one of his war heroes is currently being defended by a Malaysian lawyer.
* The writer is an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Malaya, and a former Malaysian diplomat who has served in Brussels, Washington, D.C., Fiji Islands and The Hague
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