The defence of Hashim Thaçi has a lot to deal with these days. Not only the former president of Kosovo is at the centre of an ongoing trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, but he is now also indicted on charges of obstructing justice and interfering with witnesses.
Thaçi is tried as a high-ranking figure of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war to gain independence from Serbia. In this trial, he is in the box with three former high-level KLA members who later became key figures in Kosovo politics, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi. They have been in custody since November 2020. The case, the main ongoing trial at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC), opened in April 2023 in The Hague. The prosecution is expected to conclude its case in April this year.
But at the end of 2024, Thaçi was also indicted for new criminal offences linked to his alleged interference with witnesses in his war crimes and crimes against humanity case.
Obstructing justice and witness interfering
Indeed, on 29 November 2024, the KSC pre-trial chamber confirmed an indictment against Thaçi for criminal offences against the administration of justice. He is charged along with former Kosovo Intelligence Agency chief Bashkim Smakaj, former Malisheva mayor Isni Kilaj, former KLA member Fadil Fazliu and former minister of justice Hajredin Kuçi.
Made public on 12 February 2025, the indictment alleges that, between at least 12 April 2023 and 2 November 2023, Thaçi revealed secret information and “coordinated to unlawfully influence the testimony of several SPO [Specialist Prosecutor’s Office] witnesses in the ongoing trial”.
During separate visits to the detention facilities, Thaçi allegedly coordinated three distinct groups, formed with Smakaj, Fazliu, Kilaj and other uncharged individuals, as well as with Kuçi, to influence the witnesses’ testimonies. According to the prosecutor’s evidence, the former leader repeatedly directed one or more of his visitors to instruct a witness on how to testify in the war crimes trial. “Mr Thaçi urged the visitors to return to see him again in a month, and Messrs Smakaj and Behrami visited Mr Thaçi again at the SC [Specialist Chambers] detention facilities on 7 October 2023, on which occasion Mr Thaçi allegedly gave additional instructions on how [the witness] W04752 should testify.”
Access to witnesses’ names
In another instance, Thaçi allegedly provided confidential information about a protected witness to Kilaj and Kryeziu and gave instructions on what to say in court. According to the prosecution, “during a 2 November 2023 search of Mr Kilaj’s residence, it recovered material containing confidential information about SC [Specialist Chambers] proceedings, and the identifying information of protected witnesses, including witness names”. The evidence includes recordings from non-privileged visits -all the visits that do not involve the defence- that the prosecutor could obtain with the authorisation of the judges. In November 2023, the evidence collected led to stricter detention measures, not only for Thaçi, but also for Veseli and Selimi.
Thaçi has been charged with attempted obstruction of KSC officials in the performance of their duties, breach of procedural secrecy and disobedience to the Court. Smakaj, Kilaj and Fazliu are charged with attempted obstruction of officials and disobedience to the Court. Former Justice Minister Kuçi is charged with contempt of Court.
Smakaj, Fazliu and Kilaj were arrested on 5 December in Kosovo by the prosecutor’s office with support of the European Union rule of law mission in Kosovo (EULEX). Kuçi remains on bail in Kosovo. Their initial appearance took place in mid-December and since then all five suspects have pleaded not guilty to all charges. Thaçi has hinted that the indictment is politically influenced. The case is likely to begin next autumn.
A first plea agreement
In mid-December, around the same time as Thaçi’s initial appearance in the administration of justice case, the prosecution agreed to the Court’s first-ever guilty plea, yet again for interfering with the proceedings. Three former KLA fighters, Haxhi Shala, Sabit Januzi and Ismet Bahtijari, admitted guilt to one charge of obstructing officials, and one charge of intimidation in criminal proceedings, while the third charge, obstructing officials by serious threat, was withdrawn as part of the agreement. It is not clear regarding in which case or trial they committed these offences.
According to the decision on the plea agreement, made public on 27 February 2025, “each accused accepts that they were part of a group which sought to induce Witness 1 to refrain from giving evidence before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers through the promise of a benefit. In particular, Mr Januzi and Mr Bahtijari – acting at the direction of Mr Shala - approached Witness 1 at his home on 5 and 12 April 2023, respectively. During the first approach, Mr Bahtijari told Witness 1 that he should withdraw his testimony before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers. During the second approach, Mr Januzi followed up on the first approach and relayed to Witness 1 an offer that Mr Shala and others would help him if he withdrew his testimony.”
Released with conditions
In a press release following the plea, KSC prosecutor Kimberly West described the deals as “the first occasion on which accused at the KSC have voluntarily admitted their guilt”. “This development is critical to protecting the integrity of proceedings at the KSC, as well as a step forward for the administration of justice in Kosovo,” she added. “The SPO has investigated crimes against the administration of justice to ensure that witnesses are able to testify in Court about the crimes they witnessed or experienced without fear of intimidation or retaliation.”
On 4 February 2025, the trio was sentenced, Januzi and Bahtijari to two years and Shala to three years in prison. Shala and Januzi were also ordered to make reparation payments to the only participating victim. But on 19 February 2025, the head of the KSC, judge Ekaterina Trendafilova, decided to “release with conditions” Januzi and Bahtijari, in line with a rule that allows for a modification of the sentence after the convicted has served two-thirds of it. Both men had been in pre-trial detention since 6 October 2023. Shala has been detained since 12 December 2023 but faces a longer sentence.
In the decisions to release the two men, made public on 21 February 2025, the judge noted that the convicted do not represent a threat to social stability in Kosovo and have good prospects of reintegration thanks to their “familial and social ties”. Each of them has also shown “signs that he has disassociated himself from the offences for which he was convicted, has expressed his intention to refrain from committing any offences against the administration of justice in the future, and has behaved positively while detained at the detention facilities”, wrote the judge. They will be requested to remain in Kosovo, surrender their travel documents and report weekly to a police station.
Seen as “heroes” in Kosovo
“The majority of the population did not pay much attention to these cases,” says Serbeze Haxhiaj, editor at Radio Television of Kosovo and journalist for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN). “They don’t see them as people who were trying to obstruct justice or to violate the law. Even the people who regard them as involved in crime, don’t dare or don’t feel free to talk about them as people involved in obstructing justice. There is no public debate about that. People in Kosovo are more keen on seeing them as heroes rather than war criminals.”
“What is more discussed is that this Court is biased, unfair and one-sided. That is the narrative that prevails in Kosovo”, adds Haxhiaj, explaining that in the country, the Court lacks legitimacy, as it only prosecutes crimes committed by ethnic Albanians and not those committed by Serbians.
The never-ending problem of witness intimidation
In 2022, another case for obstruction of justice saw Nasim Haradinaj and Hysni Gucati sentenced each to 4 years and 3 months in prison. In their summary of the judgment, the presiding judge wrote that the case concerned “the safety, well-being and freedom from fear of hundreds of persons who have come forward to fulfil their civic duty as witnesses”. “Without witnesses, there can be no justice for victims or for society at large. The acts and conduct of the accused challenged that very foundation,” he wrote.
In their bi-monthly review of the reasons for detention at the KSC, where the judges decide whether there are still reasons to keep the defendants behind bars, witness intimidation is routinely mentioned as a serious risk. In the 13 March 2025 decision to confirm the detention of Rexhep Selimi, one of Thaçi’s co-defendants in the main war crimes trial, the Court of appeals panel agreed that “a general climate of witness interference persists in Kosovo regarding this case”.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) also had to grapple with witness intimidation. “Witnesses changed their testimonies from the investigative phase. There were cases where they even refused to give their testimony at all,” says Bekim Blakaj, executive director at Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo, who monitors war crimes cases before international and national courts. He explains that the latter have faced similar problems when prosecuting former KLA members. “The trials were pretty much affected by this pattern.”
The pressure on witnesses shaped the very creation of the KSC. Set up in 2015 by the Kosovo parliament under pressure from the country's western allies to handle ex-KLA fighters, the Chambers are formally part of the Kosovo judicial system but are located in the Netherlands and are fully staffed by internationals. The Chambers were specifically set outside of Kosovo because of worries over witness protection in the Balkan country.
“There is clear proof that some of the witnesses of the war crime trials were intimidated, they faced attempted murders, sometimes murders,” says Haxhiaj. “This kind of atmosphere of fear prevailed in Kosovo for many years because the strongest weapon against witnesses is this kind of stigmatization that they are against the freedom fighters, against Kosovo liberty, are against the KLA”.
Around 26 years have passed since the war in Kosovo, therefore “most of the material rules have disappeared,” she says. “So, the prosecutors are heavily relying on witnesses.”
KSC AND THE NEW US ADMINISTRATION
To the challenges the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) faces within Kosovo, one was recently added from Washington. On the country’s independence day, on 17 February 2025, Richard Grenell, the newly appointed envoy for special missions of US president Donald Trump, posted on the social network X that it was a “grave injustice” that the former Kosovo leader Hashim Thaçi was behind bars and not celebrating in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, adding that “Europeans have failed to act against this injustice for the past 5 years”.
Grenell served as the special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations from 2019 to 2021.
According to Bekim Blakaj, the executive director for the Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo, there might be two main reasons behind the Trump administration’s position towards the Hague chambers. In June 2020, as Thaçi was heading to Washington to reach a bargain with Serbia in a meeting hosted by Trump and where Grenell was involved, the then KSC prosecutor Jack Smith announced the indictment against Thaçi and Veseli in a press release. Thaçi flew back home, and the meeting was cancelled and with it went the foreign policy win that Trump had in sight.
Second, “when Jack Smith left the position in The Hague, he became a coordinator of an investigation team against Trump”, explains Blakaj. Smith resigned from the prosecutor's office in November 2022 to take over the investigation into Trump’s involvement in the riot at Capitol Hill on 6 January 2021. He left that position in January 2025, shortly before Trump’s second presidential term began.
Grenell’s attack does not pose a direct threat to the KSC, which are largely funded by the European Union, although the US has contributed with staff. However, the US aid freeze has already hit many organizations in Kosovo, one of the poorest countries in Europe, which in 2023 alone benefitted from $70.3 million in US foreign aid.
