The judgment against the leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) must not mark the end of efforts to establish the truth and ensure accountability, as numerous cases of abductions, disappearances, killings and other serious human rights violations committed during the armed conflict in Kosovo and its immediate aftermath remain uninvestigated.

Montenegro is officially searching for 38 of its nationals who disappeared in Kosovo during that period. However, this list is not complete, and HRA calls on the competent state authorities to examine all available information concerning persons who disappeared in Kosovo, ensure that they are recorded in the relevant databases, and take additional steps to determine their fate, locate their remains and establish individual criminal responsibility wherever there are grounds to do so.

Yesterday, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague delivered a first-instance judgment against Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi. The Court found that, acting as part of a joint criminal enterprise (JCE), they bore criminal responsibility for the war crimes of arbitrary detention of 385 persons, cruel treatment of 49 persons, torture of 303 persons and the murder of 96 persons. Thaçi and Krasniqi were each sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment, Veseli to 18 years and Selimi to 13 years.

The Court found that all four accused, together with other members of the KLA leadership, participated in a JCE whose common criminal purpose included identifying, arresting, detaining, mistreating and, where deemed necessary, killing persons labelled as their opponents. These included Kosovo Albanians associated with other political or military structures, persons labelled as collaborators of the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia or Serbia, and members of minority communities, including Serbs and Roma.

According to the judgment, these were not a series of unrelated local incidents. Detention facilities were established, while the military police and intelligence structures were used to identify, arrest and detain people. Hashim Thaçi was found to bear command responsibility for failing to prevent and punish crimes committed by KLA members, despite being aware of them, and was also convicted for his direct participation in certain crimes.

The accused were acquitted of crimes against humanity. The Trial Panel found that the acts of violence and mistreatment were widespread and systematic, but that the Prosecution had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt a key element of crimes against humanity – that the attack was directed against a civilian population as such. According to the Panel’s findings, the victims were generally selected based on their individual circumstances, primarily because they were regarded as opponents of the KLA’s political or military objectives, rather than because they belonged to a civilian population that was targeted as a whole or as a group.

The Panel also found that the non-international armed conflict between the KLA and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, or Serbian forces, lasted until approximately 20 June 1999. Consequently, events occurring after that date were not classified as war crimes in this case.

However, abductions and disappearances did not end with the conclusion of the armed conflict on 20 June 1999. More than 25 years later, approximately 1,600 persons remain missing, including more than 400 who disappeared between June 1999 and December 2000.

In this context, we highlight three unresolved cases of enforced disappearance in Kosovo.

Tomislav Adžić from Montenegro, Deputy Director of Jugobanka in Priština, was abducted together with his colleague from Priština, Jeton Ljilja, who worked as an officer at the same bank. In July 1999, KLA members took them together to their command headquarters, located in the building of the Automobile and Motorcycle Association in Priština. No trace of them has been found since. The Adžić family attempted to have this case included in the proceedings against Thaçi and the other KLA leaders, but their application for victim status was rejected because the incident fell outside the temporal, geographical and material scope of the indictment. However, the case was reported to the competent prosecution office in Kosovo, which remains obliged to establish who bears responsibility for this crime.

The third case concerns taxi driver Halit Nurković from Rožaje, who disappeared in Kosovo on 24 July 1999 after driving a passenger from Rožaje to Gornji Petrić, in the Peć area. No trace of him has been found since. His case demonstrates the need for Montenegro’s official records on missing persons to be further reviewed and harmonised with regional databases and information provided by families. The Commission on Missing Persons of the Government of Montenegro is searching for a total of 38 persons who disappeared in Kosovo, but Nurković is not included on that list, although Montenegrin media have reported on his disappearance for years and his six daughters in Rožaje organise the annual memorial event “Following the Missing – Remembering Halit Nurković”, which includes a memorial hike on Mount Hajla.

We expect the Commission on Missing Persons of the Government of Montenegro, the Ministry of Justice and the competent state prosecution offices, in cooperation with the institutions of Kosovo and Serbia, international organisations and other competent authorities, to examine all available information concerning these and other potential cases, compare it with the existing records and take concrete measures to clarify them further, including the initiation of appropriate proceedings.