Kosovo Tribunal Convicts Former KLA Commander In First War Crimes Verdict

Salih Mustafa was found guilty of murder, arbitrary detention, and torture.

Judges at the Kosovo tribunal on December 16 convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison a former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrilla commander who ran a prison during the 1998-99 independence conflict with Serbia.

Salih Mustafa was found guilty of murder, arbitrary detention, and torture at the facility where prisoners, mostly fellow Kosovo Albanians who were political opponents of the KLA, were beaten and tortured on a daily basis.

"The panel sentences you to a single term of 26 years' imprisonment," Judge Mappie Veldt-Foglia told Mustafa after he was found guilty at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers.

Judges found that Mustafa personally took part in the beating and torture of at least two prisoners and allowed his subordinates to mistreat another so badly that he later died.

"He subjected one detainee to a mock execution," Veldt-Foglia said in a summary of the ruling.

Mustafa, 50, had denied the charges and his lawyers accused prosecution witnesses of fabricating their stories. Both sides have 30 days to appeal the decision.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a Kosovo court 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.

The court is separate from the United Nations tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which was also located in The Hague where it tried and convicted Serbian officials for war crimes committed in the Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo conflicts.

More than 13,000 people are believed to have died during the 1998-99 uprising in Kosovo when it was still part of Serbia under then-President Slobodan Milosevic.

The fighting ended after NATO air strikes on Serbian forces. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, although Belgrade does not recognize it as independent.

With reporting by Reuters