KLA member receives an 18-year prison sentence from the Kosovo War Crimes Tribunal

Pjeter Shala was a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and on Tuesday, judges at The Hague’s Kosovo tribunal sentenced him to eighteen years in jail for war crimes he committed during the 1998–1999 Kosovo revolt against Serbian troops.

Shala was found guilty of war crimes involving the use of torture, killings, and arbitrary detention while in charge of a temporary jail where victims suffered mistreatment and one man was slain.

Shala insisted on his innocence the entire time he was on trial. His attorneys contended that he neither witnessed nor took part in the offenses that were committed.

Nevertheless, the judges decided that he was “beyond reasonable doubt” a member of a criminal organization that imprisoned and mistreated at least eighteen persons, whom it believed to be spies or collaborators with the Serbs.

It is estimated that during the Kosovo rebellion against Serbian troops in 1998–1999, spearheaded by then-President Slobodan Milosevic, about 13,000 people perished. In 2008, the formerly Serbian region proclaimed its independence, a move that is not acknowledged by Belgrade.

In order to conduct proceedings under Kosovo law against KLA soldiers, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a war crimes court with its headquarters in the Netherlands and a staff of foreign judges and attorneys, was established in 2015.

It is distinct from a U.N. tribunal that is housed in The Hague and has prosecuted citizens of the former Yugoslavia for crimes committed during the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. Among those prosecuted were numerous Serb leaders and one former member of the KLA.