Reuters with separate article on starting trial in The Hague against Thaci and others

So begins reporting the snow news agency “toReuters” for the court process for Thaci and others.

Reuters reports also on the background of this event, as well as on how it is viewed in Kosovo.

A special Kosovo court filed at The Hague indicted Thaci in November 2020 on 10 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including persecution, murder, torture and forced disappearance of people during the uprising.

Thaci, 54, resigned as president shortly after that and was transferred to custody in The Hague. Three of his closest associates, including two former parliament heads, face the same charges as former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders (UÇK), the Reuters report continues.

The four are accused of participating in a joint <x0 criminal enterprise ... that carried out widespread or systematic attacks on Serbian minority civilians in Kosovo, as well as against Albanian KLA opponents.

As fighting decreased and Serbian forces withdrew under NATO bombings from Kosovo, Thaci exchanged his green uniform for a blue suit and a tie. When Kosovo declared independence in 2008, he was prime minister, and in 2016 he became president.

Before the trial, all over the small Balkan country can see signs displaying Thaci's photos and former Prime Minister Kadri Veselin with the inscription “War and PeaceHeeros”.

Reuters reports that war veterans and other nationalist Kosovo groups warned a protest in support of former KLA members on Sunday.

Mass grave

Olga Bozanic, a Kosovo Serb, hopes the trial will be an opportunity to find out what happened to the two brothers -- Todor and Lazar Kostic -- whose remains were found in a mass grave in a village of western Kosovo in 2005 -- which is involved in the indictment.

“From witness confessions, we know that they were taken from their house along with all the men from the village on July 17th 1998 and that they were tortured”, Bozanic told Reuters.

But we don't know when and how exactly were killed. Maybe during the trial we'll get some new evidence showing the details”.

The Kostic brothers were in a larger group of Serbs arrested in July that year and later killed on the edge of a rock and an army jeep was placed on them to hide their remains, said an investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But in 2005, a team of forensic experts led by the United Nations discovered the mass grave.

Along with her two brothers, 15 of Bozanic's cousins were arrested and later killed by the KLA, she said.

I expect all those responsible for the killings to be punished in order not to kill and torture again”.

Kosovo's Specialised Chamber, headquartered in the Netherlands and staffed by international judges and lawyers, was established in 2015 to handle cases under Kosovo's law against former KLA leaders.

Many Kosovo Albanians believe court is unilateral against The NLA and interested in denigrating its data.

But Ehat Miftaraj from Kosovo's non-governmental Institute for Justice said the trial should be understood as a “case against some KLA individuals and not a trial against U n The CK or the values the people of Kosovo represent”.

The court was established separately by the former UN Constitution for the former Yugoslavia, also located in The Hague, where it tried and convicted mainly Serbian war crimes officials committed in the conflicts of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

More than 13,000 people, most of them ethnic Kosovo Albanians, are believed to have died during the 1998-99 uprising, when it was still a province of Serbia under then-President Slobodan Milosevic, Reuters's report continues.

Milosevic went on trial before a separate UN court in The Hague for war crimes against Kosovo Albanians during the conflict, but he died in 2006 before a decision was made.

Several top Serbian officials, including then army chief Nebojsa Pavkovic and Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic, were sentenced to long prison terms for war crimes in Kosovo.

The fighting ended after NATO air strikes on Serbian forces and Kosovo declared independence a decade later, though Serbia continues to refuse recognition of its citizenship.

Kosovo has adopted legislation to pay Kosovo and foreign lawyers for the protection of Thaci and his colleagues and 16m euros so far have gone to their defence fund.

Gregory Kehoe, an American lawyer in Thaci's defence team, said prosecutors would be given two years to complete the presentation of evidence.

“This man sacrificed all these years and hopefully we will be able to get him into the courtroom and prove that he was an honest, honest man and bring his release”, he told Reuters.