The court of appeals at Special Court of The Hague for Kosovo today upheld the conviction of a former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rebel commander who ran a prison where torture during the 1998-99 war between Kosovo and Serbiawith the Court however reducing his sentence.
Salih Mustafa, 51, was sentenced in December 2022 to 26 years in prison for war crimes, including murder and torture. Court of Appeal judges today upheld Mustafa’s conviction for the war crimes of arbitrary detention, torture and murder, but they reduced his sentence to 22 years.
This is the first time that appeals court judges have ruled on a verdict by the Special Court for Kosovo for committing war crimes, as reported by APE-MPE. The judges ruled that Mustafa ran a detention center where prisoners, mainly Kosovo Albanians who were political opponents of the UCK, they were beaten and tortured on a daily basis. One of the prisoners did not survive these practices.
On appeal, the judges revised the sentence, ruling that in similar cases in Kosovo and international courts the defendants had received lesser sentences. Mustafa will remain in the detention center of the Hague-based Special Tribunal for Kosovo while the Court searches for a third country where he can continue to serve his prison sentence. He had sought to have his conviction overturned, but the justices said they found no legal or factual error in the trial court’s findings on most of the issues raised.
The Hague Special Tribunal for Kosovo, based in the Netherlands and staffed by international judges and lawyers, was established in 2015 to handle cases under Kosovo law against former KLA rebels. More than 13,000 people are believed to have been killed during the 1998-99 uprising in Kosovo, when it was part of Serbia under then-president Slobodan Milosevic. The fighting ended after NATO airstrikes against Serbian forces and Kosovo declared independence in 2008, although Belgrade does not recognize its independence.
Source: News Beast
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