Courts determine which individuals bear criminal responsibility for a crime, but the documents, testimonies and conclusions produced during a trial can remain relevant long after it ends.
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It is in this context that the September 16 verdict against four of the most senior former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army — Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi — takes on another significance.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, based in The Hague, found all four guilty of war crimes and handed down sentences ranging from 13 to 25 years in prison. They were acquitted of charges of crimes against humanity.
The verdict is a first-instance ruling and deals with the individual criminal responsibility of the four accused, not the responsibility of the KLA as an organization.
However, the trial’s importance is not limited to their legal future. A vast archive of documents, testimonies and findings related to the crimes, the organization of the KLA and the role of its leaders was created during the trial.
According to the judgment, the panel found the accused criminally responsible for the arbitrary detention of 385 persons, cruel treatment of 49 persons, Torture of 303 others and the murder of 96 persons.
The judges also concluded that all four had made a significant contribution to a “common criminal purpose” that targeted persons perceived as opponents of the KLA’s political or military objectives.
These remain legal findings issued by a first-instance court. Nonetheless, along with the evidence and materials administered during the proceedings, they are now part of a much broader body of documentary material on the Kosovo war.
At this point, justice, history and collective memory intersect and also collide.
Historians and sociologists interviewed by Radio Free Europe emphasize that a court verdict cannot write history. However, it can serve as one of the sources for its interpretation, especially for generations that will not know the war through direct experience.
Ibrahim Gashi, a history professor at the University of I Prishtina, says that if the verdict remains unchanged, the most negative scenario would be its influence in creating a second narrative about the nature of the KLA.
Unlike him, the director of the Center for Southeast European Studies, Florian Bieber, does not believe the verdict will Radically change historical narratives about the Kosovo war.
I Bieber told Radio Free Europe that he doubts such a change will occur, because neither the earlier judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia nor those of other courts have fundamentally transformed historical interpretations.
According to him, a court’s work must be clearly distinguished from that of a historian. A criminal trial aims to determine whether specific individuals are criminally responsible for concrete crimes, while history seeks a broader picture.
Historical research encompasses the political and military context, developments on the ground, relations between structures and society, as well as numerous sources that do not necessarily carry the same weight within a judicial proceeding.
In the Thaçi et al. Case, one of the main themes was the functioning of the KLA and the relationship that the four accused had with its structures.
I Bieber notes that most scholars and observers have considered the KLA a relatively decentralized organization without a strong hierarchy. For this reason, he does not expect a single verdict to overturn this interpretation.
This, however, does not mean that the court proceedings are irrelevant for historians. More than 130 people testified during it and a considerable amount of material was admitted.
For researchers, the value of the trial may lie not only in the legal conclusions but also in the documentation and testimonies it has made public.
Bieber expects all this material to be subjected to research. He underscores that what is interesting and important for a criminal investigation differs from what historical study requires, because the questions are not the same and history rarely focuses on establishing responsibility. Despite this, according to him, historians studying the conflict and the KLA will have to address this case.
Gashi also considers the judgment a source that deserves to be analyzed by historians, but not a document capable of defining the history of the war on its own.
According to him, This verdict will be just one reference among many others. He emphasizes that a large number of books have already been published with a consistent narrative that aligns with the facts that occurred on the ground.
Among the authors and former Western officials who have written about the war, diplomacy and international intervention in Kosovo, Gashi mentions Madeleine Albright, Wesley Clark, James Pardew and Marc Weller.
In his assessment, historiography will not be built solely on judicial documentation. Testimonies from protagonists, international sources, oral history and the experiences of the civilian population will continue to be part of the basis for writing the conflict’s history.
Another factor is that the September 16 verdict is not yet final. As a first-instance ruling, it can be challenged on appeal, so the weight it will carry in the long-term historical perspective cannot yet be assessed.
Beyond academic history lies the issue of collective memory, that is, the way society remembers, interprets and transmits the events of the past to generations.
Shemsi Krasniqi, a sociology professor at the University of Prishtina, assesses that within Kosovo the judgment’s impact might be more limited.
According to him, the perception of a large part of Kosovar society about the war has not been shaped by judicial documents, but by directly lived experience.
Krasniqi told Radio Free Europe that the truth of the citizens of Kosovo is tied to what they have experienced in their lives, to the suffering, pain, efforts, engagement, sweat and blood. Internationals, according to him, see the issue more coldly, through documents and institutional decisions, without having the same feeling.
For this reason, he does not think the verdict will fundamentally change the way the KLA and the war are remembered today within Kosovo.
According to Krasniqi, the verdict is not expected to have such an impact in Kosovo, because the people know their own history well and are aware of the KLA’s values, the importance of the struggle for freedom and its necessity.
Over the years, however, the ratio between direct memories and documents may change. This becomes especially important when the focus is no longer the generation that experienced the conflict, but the one that will learn about it only from books, archives, films, testimonies and court rulings.
Krasniqi describes this as a complex circumstance that makes the situation more difficult. He says it is hard to predict how history will be explained after 25 or 50 years, because it is not known what other developments will occur, which narratives will strengthen, which will prevail, and around what agreement or consensus will be reached.
The war and differing narratives
The September 16 ruling is not the first attempt by a court to address the war’s history. A whole body of international judgments on crimes committed in Kosovo had already been created before it.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has convicted several former senior Serbian officials from politics, the military and the police for crimes committed in Kosovo.
Nevertheless, international court decisions have not closed the clashes over interpreting the wars of the 1990s.
Bieber says the experience of the last 25 years does not give much reason for optimism regarding the influence of international judgments in shaping historical narratives. According to him, verdicts have usually been accepted when they aligned with the national narrative and rejected when they did not fit it.
He also expects the judgment against Thaçi, Veseli, Selimi and Krasniqi to be interpreted differently in Kosovo and in Serbia.
According to Bieber, Serbian nationalists are expected to see the verdict as confirmation of their views, overlooking the fact that many more Serbian officers have been convicted for more serious crimes, not to mention others who were never prosecuted. Meanwhile, in Kosovo, he says rejection is already being observed based on the erroneous claim that the judgment somehow endangers the historical record.
Gashi also predicts that nationalist circles in Serbia will use the verdict to support their narrative regarding the Kosovo war. Precisely for this reason, according to him, the engagement of historians becomes even more important.
He says that historians have a duty to use arguments stemming from collective memory and testimonies of different protagonists through oral history, as well as to consider references from Western authors who had access and information from the ground.
The passage of time simultaneously raises the question of how long the direct memory of the war can survive.
Krasniqi believes this experience will continue to be transmitted for decades and will not be forgotten. He argues that the war has been documented, visualized and written about, and subsequently treated through artistic, literary and cinematic creations, therefore the memory of it will remain alive.
