Specialist Prosecutor Kimberly West requested sentences of 45 years’ imprisonment for each of the four defendants, including former Kosovo president Hashim Thaçi, in the Thaçi et al. case, as the prosecution opened its closing arguments in the war crimes trial before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on February 9, Koha.net reported.

Thaçi, former parliamentary speakers Kadri Veseli and Jakup Krasniqi, and former Vetevendosje MP Rexhep Selimi are charged with participating in a joint criminal enterprise linked to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 1998-1999 conflict with Serbia.

According to the court’s scheduling order, the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) is expected to continue presenting its closing statement into February 10. The Victims’ Counsel will then deliver its submissions, followed by closing arguments from the defence teams starting on February 11.

West told the court that the prosecution is seeking convictions of specific individuals, not of the former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) General Staff as a whole.

She said the SPO is requesting guilty verdicts on all counts of the indictment, with a single sentence of 45 years for each defendant, based on their individual responsibility and contribution to the crimes.

“These crimes are war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are extremely serious and have not lost their gravity over time,” West was cited as saying.

Under the indictment published in February 2023, the four are accused in connection with about 100 murders, as well as torture and cruel treatment in roughly 40 detention centres. The SPO has brought six counts of war crimes and four counts of crimes against humanity, alleging that most victims were Albanian civilians.

The defendants have rejected all accusations, maintaining that the KLA did not operate under a strict central hierarchy and that its aim was to fight Serbian forces rather than target civilians.