‘I Expect Acquittal’: Kosovo’s Thaci Launches War Crimes Defence

Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci addressed the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Tuesday as defence lawyers began their opening statements in his trial, saying he anticipates that he will be cleared.

"I expect to be acquitted," Thaci told the court.

Thaci and his three co-defendants, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi - all former Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA leaders who later became senior politicians - are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed between at least March 1998 and September 1999, during and just after the war with Serbian forces.

They are accused of having individual and command responsibility for crimes that were mainly committed against prisoners who were held at a series of detention facilities set up by the KLA in Kosovo and neighbouring Albania, including 102 murders.

The prosecution laid out its case in its opening statements on Monday, claiming that the KLA had a well-structured chain of command that allowed the accused, as leaders of the guerrilla force, to be aware of what was happening on the ground and have control over it.

But defence teams are arguing that the four men did not have control over members of what was a loosely-organised guerrilla force without a rigid military structure.

Thaci's lawyers, Gregory Kehoe and Luka Misetic, told media after the hearing on Tuesday that previous cases against former Kosovo guerrillas Fatmir Limaj and Ramush Haradinaj at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal have already proven that no crimes were committed as part of a 'joint criminal enterprise' as the indictment of Thaci and his co-defendants claims.

Misetic said in court that in the case against Limaj, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal had ruled...