The twenty-five year prison sentence of Hashim Thaçi, the former leader of the Kosovo guerrillas, who became Prime Minister and then President of the country whose independence he proclaimed, is an earthquake in the Balkans. It requires us to correct the history books. It calls into question the very legitimacy of the war of liberation. Thirty years later, she questions the blindness of NATO, the game of the United States, the ingenuity of Europeans. It shames the media which imperturbably portrayed the leader of the UCK as a resistance fighter, the incarnation of the camp of Good struggling with “Milosevic’s army”. Because it was not the assassination of Serbian police officers or soldiers of the Yugoslav army that led Hashim Thaçi to The Hague.
He was convicted of the murder of 96 Serb, Roma and Albanian-speaking civilians. He was found guilty of the kidnapping of 385 civilians, three-quarters of whom were savagely tortured. So many war crimes committed after the war or at the end of the fighting, while the Yugoslav army, bludgeoned for 78 days by NATO, abandoned the province. The national hero was a bastard. The Father of the small Albanian-speaking nation, an unworthy father.
Cheap paid
The international tribunal which sentenced him and three of his lieutenants was made up of 20 foreign magistrates from the specialized chambers for Kosovo. Funded by the European Union and chaired by an American, based in The Hague but founded by a vote of the Parliament of Pristina and under Kosovar law. The investigators took their time. The file is 30,000 pages long. One hundred and fifty-six victims were interviewed. There would have been twice as many without “a permanent climate of intimidation of witnesses” about which the court complained bitterly.
Kosovo’s biggest crime was committed by NATO and without a UN mandate
Twenty-five years in prison is not a lot to pay when you see the list of 500 missing people. Especially if we remember the previous investigations which came to an end. Notably the report to the Council of Europe by Dick Marty, Swiss State Councilor. In 2010, he directly implicated Hashim Thaçi, leader of a UCK group, that of Drenica, author of an unprecedented crime. Several hundred prisoners taken to Albania and dismembered to be sold in pieces: the cornea, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys… The facts are proven. The court in Pristina was content to condemn lamp workers. No evidence either for weapons sold in Europe, heroin trafficking, corruption.
NATO’s crime
It took almost thirty years for Hashim Thaçi to find his judges. You might find that it’s quite long. Especially since he had to put up with the indignant denials of his Parisian friends. In 2018, for the centenary of November 11, he was placed in the tribune of honor. He appears in the photos, right between Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, while the president of Serbia, our best ally in the Great War, was relegated to a secondary platform. Impunity is followed by awkward silence. The only defense witnesses in The Hague were Anglo-Saxons, including General Clark, former NATO commander in Europe, who came to support the man he brought to power.
He deserves to be in the box. Because Kosovo’s greatest crime was committed by NATO, in defiance of its charter and without a UN mandate, by attacking Serbia which was not attacking it. Seventy-eight days of bombing to support Hashim Thaçi’s men and reshape Yugoslavia by creating a proto-state, an American protectorate. This is the first time that the borders in Europe have been rectified. Kosovo has set a precedent. Russia found an alibi to do the same. Yesterday in Georgia, today in Ukraine, tomorrow elsewhere.
