The activity of the Special Tribunal for Kosovo continues. After a long period of stasis, the Court issued the first sentence against Salih Mustafa in December 2022.
This time the former member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Pjetër Shala nicknamed “Wolf” was sentenced by the Special Court to 18 years in prison for war crimes.
The Kosovo Specialized Chambers in The Hague found Pjeter Shala guilty of three charges of war crimes because between 17 May and 5 June 1999 he had participated in arbitrary detentions, torture and in one case the unlawful killing of a detainee in the Kukes Metal Factory in northern Albania.
On 15 April this year, in the final statement, the prosecutor's office asked the trial chamber in The Hague to impose a sentence on the accused Shala "a single sentence of 28 years in prison" for war crimes.
The defense, however, described the defendant as a simple KLA soldier who helped his people fight at the front.
The court ruled that Shala is "individually criminally liable as part of a joint criminal enterprise" in the arbitrary detention, torture and murder of prisoners held in the factory, which the KLA used as a detention centre.
The court found that "land victims were predominantly Kosovo Albanians", Judge Mappie Veldt-Foglia explained before announcing the verdict. He added that "evidence shows that people were arrested and detained on the basis of vague accusations of being traitors, collaborators of the Serbian authorities... or not sufficient supporters of the KLA, financially, militarily or politically."
Judge Veldt-Foglia noted that "the detainees were arrested in their place of residence, in the streets, upon arrival in Albania from abroad, in refugee camps or where they had been hosted", and that Shala was directly involved in the transfer of one of the inmates to the Kukes Metal Factory.
"Shala had the intent to kill", said Judge Veldt-Foglia, underlining that he had threatened one of the inmates with death.
Shala joined the KLA in May 1998, when he and 30 other men crossed the border from Albania into Kosovo to fight against Serbian rule. At first it followed a group of KLA fighters led by Ramush Haradinaj based in the villages of Smolica and Jabllanica in the Gjakova/Djakovica municipality.
Shala was then stationed in the village of Dujake and became a local military leader in western Kosovo, where KLA fighters were controlled by Haradinaj.
The Special Court has so far found Salih Mustafa guilty of war crimes, as well as the heads of the KLA War Veterans Organization, Hysni Gucatin and Nasim Haradinaj for publishing the special documents. Other KLA leaders continue to be detained and tried in the Specialized Chambers in The Hague, such as former president Hashim Thaçi, former Oblast presidents Kadri Veseli and former MP Rexhep Selimi.
AL
