The Hague-based Kosovo tribunal has sentenced former Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) commander Pjeter Shala to 18 years in prison for war crimes committed during Kosovo's war of independence from Serbia.
The tribunal handed down the sentence on July 16 after Shala, who has Belgian citizenship, was convicted of the murder of one person and the illegal captivity and torture of nearly 20 others in June 1999 at a metal factory in Kukes, Albania.
"Shala participated in the transfer under guard of one of the detainees in the factory, participated in the interrogation and mistreatment of the detainees, together with other members of the [UCK]," Judge Mappie Veldt-Foglia said.
"Shala was the first to hit some detainees. One of the detainees said that Shala hit him with a baseball bat and accused him of being a spy," she said in outlining the treatment of the captives, noting testimony from the victims was "vivid, detailed and convincing."
Shala, arrested two years ago in Belgium, had pleaded not guilty at the EU-backed Kosovo Specialist Chambers, which is based in the Netherlands but is part of Kosovo's legal system.
The U.S. attorney who heads the prosecutor's office argued to the three-judge panel that there was sufficient evidence to convict Shala despite what he called a climate of witness intimidation in Kosovo.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers was established to investigate allegations that members of the UCK committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1998-99 Kosovo War.
It operates under Kosovar law but is based in the Netherlands to shield witnesses from intimidation.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a decade after a war between ethnic Albanian rebels and Serbian forces, which ended after a 78-day NATO air campaign drove Serbian troops out and an international peacekeeping force moved in.
The conflict left more than 10,000 people dead -- most of them ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. More than 1,600 people remain unaccounted for.
Kosovo, which has a largely ethnic Albanian population, is recognized by many Western states but not Serbia or its allies Russia and China.