Kosovo tribunal confirms war crimes conviction of ex-KLA commander

Appeals judges at the Kosovo tribunal in The Hague on Thursday confirmed the conviction of a former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrilla commander who ran a torture prison during Kosovo's 1998-99 conflict with Serbia, but reduced his sentence.

Appeals judges at the Kosovo tribunal in The Hague on Thursday confirmed the conviction of a former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrilla commander who ran a torture prison during Kosovo's 1998-99 conflict with Serbia, but reduced his sentence. Salih Mustafa, 51, received a 26-year prison sentence in December 2022 when convicted of war crimes including murder and torture. The appeals judges on Thursday confirmed his conviction for the war crimes of arbitrary detention, torture and murder, but reduced his prison sentence to 22 years.

It was the first time appeals judges have ruled on a war crimes verdict by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, as the tribunal is formally known. Judges found that Mustafa ran a detention centre where prisoners, mostly fellow Kosovo Albanians who were political opponents of the KLA, were beaten and tortured on a daily basis. One of the detainees did not survive the ordeal.

On appeal, judges revised the sentence because they said that in comparable cases in Kosovo domestic courts and international tribunals defendants had received shorter sentences. Presiding judge Michele Picard said the lower trial panel had "committed discernable errors in sentencing".

Mustafa will remain in the Kosovo tribunal's detention centre in The Hague while the court looks for a third country to host him while he serves out his sentence. He had sought to have his conviction overturned, but judges said they found no legal or factual errors in the lower trial chamber's findings for most of the issues raised.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, based in the Netherlands and staffed by international judges and lawyers, was set up in 2015 to handle cases under Kosovo law against former KLA guerrillas. More than 13,000 people are believed to have been killed during the 1998-99 uprising in Kosovo when it was part of Serbia under then-President Slobodan Milosevic. The fighting ended after NATO air strikes on Serbian forces, and Kosovo declared independence in 2008, although Belgrade does not recognise it as independent. 

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