A Hague Court Gave Kosovo's Founding President 25 Years for Murder and Torture. Biden Once Called Hashim Thaci 'the George Washington of Kosovo.' The Square in Pristina Emptied Within Minutes.

Hashim Thaci, the guerrilla commander who led Kosovo to independence and then served as its prime minister and president, was convicted of war crimes on Wednesday and sentenced to 25 years in prison by a European Union-backed court in The Hague. The 58-year-old stood in silence in a suit and tie as Presiding Judge Charles Smith read the sentence.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers found Thaci guilty of four counts of war crimes, including murder, torture, cruel treatment and arbitrary detention, committed while he was political director of the Kosovo Liberation Army during the 1998-99 war against Serbian forces. Judges held him and his three co-defendants criminally responsible for 96 murders and for the arbitrary detention and torture of hundreds of people, most of them political opponents and civilians the KLA considered collaborators or traitors. Smith said Thaci "used his position, leadership, authority and standing" to encourage the crimes and failed to investigate them.

The panel acquitted all four men of crimes against humanity, ruling that prosecutors had not proved the abuses were part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians. Prosecutors had asked for 45 years for each defendant. Jakup Krasniqi also received 25 years, Kadri Veseli 18 and Rexhep Selimi 13. All four denied the charges and can appeal. Thaci faces a separate trial later this month on charges of intimidating witnesses.

"Throughout my life, I stood with the people of Kosovo defending freedom, life and dignity," Thaci told the judges in February at the end of a trial that ran nearly three years. "I was always guided by the Western ideals of democracy, equality and justice."

The verdict landed hard in Pristina, where the four men are widely seen as national heroes. Thousands rallied over the weekend under red and black Albanian flags, portraits of the defendants covered the city, and a giant digital clock counted down to Wednesday's ruling. One banner read: "In the name of the people, declare them innocent." When the guilty verdicts came, the crowd in the central square dispersed within minutes. Foreign Minister Glauk Konjufca called it "a sad, unjust, undeserved decision."

Thaci was a student who returned from what he described as political exile in Switzerland to join the armed struggle and earned the nickname "the Snake" for evading Serb forces. Western leaders embraced him, inviting him to the 1999 peace talks in France, and then-Vice President Joe Biden once called him "the George Washington of Kosovo." He declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and resigned as president in November 2020 to face the indictment.

About 13,000 people died in the Kosovo war, most of them ethnic Albanians, and roughly a million were driven from their homes before a 78-day NATO bombing campaign forced Serbian forces out. The court's staff is largely international because of fears about witness safety; in 2022 it convicted two leaders of a KLA veterans' association for intimidating witnesses by publishing leaked confidential files. Serbia still refuses to recognize Kosovo's independence, and years of EU-mediated talks between Belgrade and Pristina have gone nowhere.