PRISTINA, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Thousands gathered in Pristina on Tuesday bearing banners of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army to protest against the trial of former KLA leaders, including a former president, accused of war crimes during the 1998-99 war for independence.
Former president Hashim Thaci, former parliament speakers Jakup Krasniqi and Kadri Veseli, and former lawmaker Rexhep Selimi were arrested in 2020 and sent to face trial at the special Kosovo war crimes court in The Hague.
Thaci and three other former KLA commanders are charged with persecution, murder, torture and forced disappearances of people during and shortly after the 1998-99 uprising that eventually brought independence for the Albanian majority region from Serbia.
They deny all charges.
The court is hearing closing arguments in the trial this week, before judges deliver a final verdict within three months. Prosecutors are seeking a sentence of 45 years for each.
"Those who deserve to be in The Hague are the occupiers, not the liberators," said Miran Zeka, 49, who came from Albania to protest in Pristina.
"We fought in our land, we did not go to Serbia to fight," said Bekim Muja, 53, a veteran of the 1998-99 Kosovo war.
Many protesters woreKLA uniforms, others waved KLA, Kosovo and Albanian flags.Supporters held placards reading "Freedom has a name," and held photos of Thaci and others reading "Heroes of War and Peace."
Thaci, 57, served as prime minister, foreign minister and president of independent Kosovo between 2008 and 2020.
More than 13,000 people, the majority of them Kosovo Albanians, are believed to have died during the late 1990s insurgency, when Kosovo was still a province of Serbia under then-nationalist strongman President Slobodan Milosevic, whose troops violently cracked down on ethnic Albanians.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, staffed by international judges and lawyers, was set up in 2015 to handle war crimes cases under Kosovo law against ex-KLA guerrillas. The war crimes tribunal was set up outside the small Balkan country because of worries about witness intimidation as former KLA leaders are seen by many in Kosovo as national liberation heroes.
(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
