How One Legal Doctrine Could Decide Hashim Thaçi's Political Legacy
The prosecution's final brief seeks to separate liberation from liability, arguing Kosovo's independence struggle and alleged crimes by senior leaders are legally distinct questions entirely.
The courtroom in The Hague does not begin its work by asking whether Kosovo deserved to be free.
It begins with a far narrower question.
Did Hashim Thaçi, together with Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi, bear individual criminal responsibility for crimes allegedly committed against specific victims between March 1998 and September 1999?
Everything else follows from that question.
The distinction is not rhetorical. It is the foundation upon which the entire prosecution has been constructed. In its Final Trial Brief1, submitted after years of witness testimony, documentary evidence and forensic examination, the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office does not argue that the Kosovo Liberation Army was, in itself, a criminal organisation. Nor does it contend that Kosovo’s aspiration for independence was unlawful. Instead, it argues that a group of senior political and military leaders allegedly used parts of the KLA’s organisational structure to pursue an additional objective beyond fighti…
