By Scott Taylor
Last week it was announced that Kosovo President Hasim Thaçi faces a war crimes indictment from the Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers. According to the special prosecutors, Thaçi along with eight other former senior military officials of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are collectively accused of committing “nearly 100 murders.”
In addition to the murders, Thaçi and his gang-of-eight are also alleged to have engaged in “torture, persecution and enforced disappearance.”
For those unfamiliar with the recent history of the Balkans it might seem startling that the President of a European nation could be indicted for such violent crimes. However for those who have studied the exploits of Thaçi closely, it begs the question: what took so long to charge him?
The crazy part about all of this is that Hashim Thaçi has never pretended to be anything other than what he is, and by that I mean a career criminal and a thug.
Back in 1993 at the age of 25, Thaçi became a member of the ethnic Albanian KLA, which at the time was listed by the CIA as a terrorist organization.
Thaçi’s self-given nickname was “Snake” and he was responsible for trafficking drugs and weapons for the KLA. In 1997 he was convicted in absentia of committing acts of terrorism by the District Court in Pristina and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
However, in 1998 as KLA Albanian separatists forces were openly waging an insurgency against Yugoslav security forces, the U.S. State Department had a change of heart. The ‘terrorist’ KLA suddenly became the freedom fighter KLA and their ringleader Thaçi aka ‘Snake’ was propelled into the role of statesman.
In March 1999, NATO forces including Canada, intervened in Kosovo in support of the KLA. After a 78-day bombing campaign the Yugoslavs were forced to capitulate.
Naturally it was Thaçi and his fellow KLA leadership that dominated the post-conflict political landscape in Kosovo. Thaçi was elected Prime Minister of Kosovo in 2007 and on 17 February 2008, he made a unilateral declaration of independence.
The U.S. immediately recognized Kosovo as an independent state and pressured other countries – including Canada to similarly re-draw the map of Europe.
The Russians used their veto to deny Kosovo membership at the UN and other European countries with separatist movements within their own borders have blocked Kosovo from joining NATO and the E.U.
So while Kosovo remains in a sort of international status limbo, Thaçi has been living up to his old nickname,
The German Intelligence Agency BND conducted a recent investigation into Thaçi and his regime and concluded “The key players (including Thaçi) are involved in inter-linkages between politics, business and organized crime structures in Kosovo.” To put it bluntly, Kosovo is a narco-criminal enterprise.
A separate report conducted for the Council of Europe had a far more sinister overtone. It implicated Thaçi and the former KLA commanders of such heinous crimes as human organ trafficking. Innocent victims – both ethnic Serbian and Albanian – were allegedly executed for the purpose of harvesting their organs on the black market.
In November 2017, Prime Minister Trudeau hosted President Thaçi when he visited Ottawa. Thaçi’s message at the time was that Canada and Kosovo were being targeted by Russian meddling because our two great nations shared the same “principles and values.’
Because Thaçi’s comments mirrored the narrative of the Liberal government – that being ‘Russia bad’ – the Canadian media simply parotted these sentiments without giving any honest context.
Thaçi aka ‘Snake’ presides over a failed narco-criminal state and he has now personally been indicted for war crimes. How the hell does that align with Canadian principles and values?
