سجناء ، معظمهم من ألبان كوسوفو الذين كانوا معارضين سياسيين لجيش تحرير كوسوفو ، للضرب. ويتعرضون للتعذيب بشكل يومي.
Mustafa, 50, had denied the charges and his lawyers accused prosecution witnesses of fabricating their stories. Both sides have 30 days to appeal the decision.
International tribunal
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a Kosovo court seated in the Netherlands and staffed by international judges and lawyers, was set up to handle cases under Kosovo law against former KLA fighters.
The court is separate from the United Nations tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which was also located in The Hague where it tried and convicted Serbian officials for war crimes committed in the Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts.الصف الأوسط ، أدان قائد المتمردين السابق صالح مصطفى بارتكاب جريمة قتل وتعذيب وسجنه لمدة 26 عامًا في أول حكم يصدره عن جرائم حرب [بيتر ديجونغ / وكالة الصحافة الفرنسية]
More than 13,000 people are believed to have died during the 1998-99 uprising in Kosovo when it was still part of Serbia under then-President Slobodan Milosevic.
The fighting ended after NATO air raids on Serbian forces, and Kosovo declared independence in 2008 – although Belgrade does not recognise it’s
The verdict came at a sensitive time, as ethnic tensions have flared again in Kosovo nearly a quarter-century after the war, with attackers exchanging gunfire with police at the weekend.
‘Burnt, electrocuted, stabbed’
isoners were forced to sleep in puddles, denied food for two or three days at a time, and when they asked for water, the KLA soldiers “urinated upon them saying: ‘here’s water for you'”.
“Detainees were beaten, hit with baseball bats, iron and rubber batons, they were burnt, electrocuted, stabbed, kicked punched and slapped,” the judge said.
Mustafa personally interrogated two detainees, subjecting one to a mock execution and beating him “all over his body” and he was also present while his soldiers abused other prisoners.
One victim was left in a “near-to-death” state and denied medical care.
He was later found dead, with judges saying the mistreatment and lack of aid contributed to his death, while he also had gunshot wounds that could have either been inflicted by KLA rebels or advancing Serb troops
Judges found that Mustafa, who was arrested in 2020 while working as an adviser at Kosovo’s defence ministry, ran a unit of the KLA in the Zllash region east of Pristina during the war.His group kept at least six people, who were accused of collaborating with Serbs, “in barns suitable for animals, in deplorable conditions with livestock excrement lying around”, Veldt-Foglia said.