By Linda Nikaj*, Esq./
Yesterday, in the heart of Prishtina, thousands filled the square to protest the ongoing trial of former KLA leaders. The streets were filled with flags, frustration, and a deep, familiar ache. What unfolded was more than a political demonstration — it was a collective defense of the war’s truth, the victims’ dignity, and a history that Kosovars refuse to let others rewrite. The protest was a denouncement of a prosecution that targets the wrong people and distorts both history and justice. Despite the international community’s intervention during the war and embracement of Kosova, Albanians now feel deeply betrayed by The Hague the very institutions that once claimed to stand with them.
More than two decades after the Kosova War, the wounds of that conflict remain open. Mass graves continue to be unearthed in Serbia. Families still wait for answers about their missing loved ones. Survivors of torture and sexual violence carry lifelong scars and challenges. And yet, instead of confronting Serbia’s responsibility for the atrocities committed against Kosovar Albanians, the international community has turned its focus toward prosecuting the very people who defended them.
In 2020, the Kosova Specialist Chambers indicted several former Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) leaders — including Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi, and Rexhep Selimi — on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. These indictments read as a calculated distortion of history, an effort to punish the victims instead of the perpetrators — a deliberate attempt to rewrite a history that Albanians paid for in blood.
The Specialist Prosecutor’s Office issued a press release announcing Thaçi’s indictment before it was confirmed by a judge — a move that violated its own rules. The release accused Thaçi and Veseli of putting “personal interests ahead of the victims,” language that read more like political messaging than legal procedure.
The damage was immediate. Kosova’s reputation suffered. Its political stability wavered. And the perception of impropriety fueled speculation that the indictments were politically timed. Even former U.S. Congressman Eliot Engel urged the State Department to ensure the court was not targeting individuals based on ethnicity — a stunning statement from one of Kosova’s strongest allies.
Six years later, the trial is still in progress, and no verdict has yet been delivered. Looking back, the timing of the indictments alone raised alarms. The indictment of Thaçi was announced just days before he was scheduled to head to Washington, D.C. for meetings at the White House aimed at resuming stalled peace talks with Serbia. Thaçi resigned immediately, unwilling to face trial while serving as Kosova’s president. The political shockwaves were immediate and destabilizing.
The issues with the prosecutions transcend just timing. The prosecutions threaten Kosova’s fragile democratic institutions, undermine already‑difficult negotiations with Serbia, and retraumatize victims whose suffering has never been acknowledged by the perpetrators who caused it.
A Transitional Democracy Undermined
Kosova is a young state, still building its institutions, fighting for international recognition, and struggling to heal from the brutality of the 1990s and the decades that came before. The KLA emerged as a response to Serbia’s systematic oppression: the stripping of Kosova’s autonomy, closure of Albanian schools, removal of Albanian officials, and violent crackdown that followed. More than 13,000 Albanians were killed. Hundreds of thousands were displaced. Children, both girls and boys, were subjected to sexual violence. Women were raped and tortured. Entire families vanished.
Serbia has never accepted responsibility for these crimes. Many of the perpetrators remain unpunished. More than 50 members of the Jashari family were killed in Prekaz, and still, there is no justice for the Jashari family. The Bytyqi brothers — three Albanian‑American men executed by Serbian police — are still denied justice. Survivors like Vjollca Salihu and Vafsije Krasniqi Goodman have waited decades for accountability that never came. Justice has yet to be delivered for countless others.
Against this backdrop, the Specialist Chambers’ decision to prosecute these KLA leaders — while Serbian officials responsible for mass atrocities have only minimally and sparsely been held accountable — feels profoundly unbalanced.
Kosova’s institutions have worked to address the past: providing reparations to war veterans, civilian victims, and survivors of sexual violence. However, the Specialist Chambers excludes Kosovars entirely from its staff, judges, and prosecutors. It operates outside Kosova, beyond the reach of its democratic oversight. For many Albanians, it feels imposed, undemocratic, and disconnected from the lived reality of the people it claims to serve.
The result is a deep erosion of trust — not only in the court, but in the international actors who pressured Kosova to create it.
A Roadblock to Peace
Kosova and Serbia have attempted dialogue for years, but progress has been slow and fragile. Agreements signed since the war have gone unimplemented. Recognition of Kosova’s independence — the central issue — remains off the table for Serbia.
The indictments arrived at a moment when diplomacy was already strained. Even Serbia’s government warned that the prosecutions could inflame tensions between Kosova’s Albanian majority and Serbian minority. The Washington meetings that followed produced no recognition, no accountability, and no meaningful breakthrough.
Instead, the indictments handed Serbia a political gift: a way to deflect attention from its own wartime crimes and to argue that “both sides” were equally culpable. For a country still campaigning to convince other states to withdraw recognition of Kosova, this narrative is dangerous.
Kosova’s path to international integration depends on stability, credibility, and recognition. These prosecutions threaten all three.
Punishing the Victims by Prosecuting Their Defenders
International criminal law is meant to target the worst offenders — those who commit atrocities, abuse power, and terrorize civilians. But in Kosova, the people being prosecuted are widely regarded as liberators who defended their communities from genocide and ethnic cleansing.
For Albanians, the indictments feel like a moral inversion: the heroes are on trial, while the perpetrators walk free.
Economist Fejzullah Ibrahimi captured the sentiment shared by many Kosovars: “A big injustice is being committed here by putting on trial our liberators.”
This is not blind nationalism. It is lived experience. The accused were the faces of resistance during a time when Albanians were being massacred, raped, and expelled from their homes. They were the ones who stood between civilians and a regime that sought to erase them. To prosecute them now — not prosecuting the architects of Serbia’s campaign of violence — is to retraumatize victims who have already endured the unimaginable.
It also risks deterring future victims in other conflicts from cooperating with international courts. If defending your people from genocide can later be reframed as criminality, why would any oppressed group trust international justice again?
Conclusion
Victims continue to wait for Serbia, the perpetrator of the war, to recognize its crimes and for the international community to enforce real accountability. Families still search for the missing. Survivors still carry trauma. Still, the international community has chosen to prosecute only one side — the side that suffered the most. This is not justice. Anything short of full acquittals would be vengeance dressed up as law. Albanians know the difference between the rule of law and rule by law — and this process increasingly resembles the latter.
The indictments of Kosova’s wartime leaders threaten the country’s democratic progress, destabilize regional peace efforts, and inflict new wounds on victims who have already suffered enough. Kosova’s institutions are ready to confront the past — but they should be supported, not sidelined.
Justice must never come at the expense of truth. And the truth of the Kosova War is clear: Albanians were the victims of a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. Prosecuting their defenders while their oppressors remain unpunished is not justice. It is a distortion of history. Kosova deserves better. Its victims deserve better. The international community must do better. Rule of law, not rule by law!
February 18, 2026
*Linda Nikaj is an attorney in the private sector an adjunct professor. She earned her B.A. in Political Science from Baruch College, M.A. from Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy, and J.D. from Seton Hall Law School.
