The Honorable Donald J. Trump
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500
August 6, 2026
Dear President Trump,
I respectfully urge your decisive leadership and diplomatic intervention regarding the ongoing, politically motivated trials of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UÇK) leadership at the Specialist Chambers in The Hague. As a leader who has consistently championed national sovereignty, rejected the overreach of unaccountable international tribunals, and brokered breakthroughs in the Balkans, you can put an end to this profound historical injustice.
Mr. President,
The prosecution of Kosovo’s freedom fighters threatens to rewrite the history of a just war and destabilize a crucial American ally. As President of Pan-Albanian Federation of America VATRA, the longest Albanian organization in existence, I ask you to consider the following historical, political, and diplomatic realities:
The Moral Imperative – The Kosovo war was not a conflict of equal aggressors; it was a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing waged by the state apparatus of Slobodan Milošević against an innocent civilian population. The KLA arose as a defensive, volunteer force born out of absolute necessity to prevent the total annihilation of the Albanian people. To equate the desperate actions of a colonized, targeted people fighting for survival with the state-sponsored machinery of Serbian terror is a moral failure.
The lives of 15,000 murdered Albanian civilians, the suffering of 25,000 victims of wartime sexual violence, and the displacement of over a million refugees – figures that official data still underreports, must not be forgotten. What’s more important the immense pain cannot be dishonored by criminalizing the leaders who stood up to stop a genocide.
The Unbreakable Bond with the United States
Kosovo is proudly the most pro-American nation on earth. Its freedom was forged through a sacred bond with the United States, cemented by the brave intervention of the U.S. military in 1999. Across the administrations of Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and your mandates, Kosovo’s leaders have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Washington on every major global security initiative. By contrast, the current proceedings in The Hague undermine this legacy. They alienate a deeply loyal, strategic partner in a volatile region, signaling to the world that America’s closest allies can be abandoned to bureaucratic international courts that do not reflect American values of justice and sovereignty.
Your Legacy of Protecting Kosovo Against Aggression
Mr. President, your administration has already demonstrated a profound understanding of the Balkan dynamic. You successfully bypassed frozen diplomatic dogmas to deliver the historic 2020 Washington Agreement, focusing on economic normalization and securing Israel’s recognition of Kosovo. You have consistently protected Kosovo from falling victim to renewed Serbian aggression and revanchism. Today, Belgrade and its counterparts in Moscow actively use the tribunal in The Hague as a propaganda tool to vindicate Milošević’s regime, delegitimize Kosovo’s statehood, and weaken American influence in Southeastern Europe.
Dismantling the political narrative of this tribunal is a natural continuation of your policy to counter foreign malign influence and secure a lasting, dignified peace. Securing peace demands an immediate end to these political proceedings and the swift release of Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi, allowing them to return home to the embrace of a free nation.
Path Forward – Acts of Defense Do Not Constitute War Crimes
Mr. President, as the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) pushes its final decisions into late September 2026, the United States cannot stand by. The KSC have strayed far from their original mission. It has evolved into an opaque mechanism that disproportionately targets the victims of the conflict while shielding the ultimate instigators of the war. Appropriately, the focus of the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s campaign against the actions of the International Criminal Court is his argument that foreign tribunals risk prosecuting individuals for defending their own country. In the case of the KLA, The Hague misinterprets localized conflicts which constitute acts of defense as war crimes.
Mr. President, we urgently call on you to exert American diplomatic power to review the mandate of this tribunal, to stop this endless judicial overreach and declare to the world that defending one’s homeland against genocide is never a crime.
Thank you for your enduring commitment to justice, your strength on the global stage, and your continued friendship with the people of Kosovo.
With the highest respect and consideration,
Dr. Elmi Berisha
President of the Pan Albanian Federation of America VATRA
