A Long Road to Justice

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A Kosovar court based in the Netherlands sentenced a former Kosovar independence fighter Tuesday to 18 years in prison for murdering one person and detaining and torturing dozens of others at a makeshift prison at a factory during the Kosovo-Serbia war, Radio Free Europe reported.

Pjëter Shala was found guilty of three war crimes – arbitrary detention, torture and murder – committed at a prison set up at a metal factory in Kukës, Albania in June 1999, while Shala served as commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

The case was heard by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a court that follows Kosovar law but is staffed by international lawyers and judges and is based in The Hague to protect witnesses from intimidation.

It is separate from a United Nations tribunal, also located in The Hague, which prosecuted nationals from the former Yugoslavia over the 1990s Balkans wars, including several Serb officials and one former KLA member for crimes committed in the Kosovo conflict.

In a statement, the court said Shala’s victims were individuals suspected of collaborating or sympathizing with Serbian authorities, or insufficiently supporting the KLA during Kosovo’s war of independence from Serbia (1998-1999).

The court heard 22 witnesses who provided “vivid, detailed and convincing” testimony, according to Judge Mappie Veldt-Foglia, though the trial was held against “a backdrop of a persistent climate of witness intimidation.”

Surviving detainees were kept in inhumane conditions without enough food or water, and left with physical and mental injuries that hindered some from living a normal life, the court’s statement added.

Shala was arrested two years ago in Belgium and pleaded not guilty to all charges when the trial opened in February 2023.

Specialist Prosecutor Kimberly West, whose office indicted Shala, welcomed the ruling by calling it an “important step for the rule of law,” Euronews reported.

More than 10,000 people were killed in Kosovo’s war of independence from Serbia, which ended after a NATO air campaign repelled Serbian troops from the territory.

The former Serbian province declared its independence in 2008, earning recognition from numerous Western states while Serbia, Russia and China withheld it.