By Stephanie van den Berg and Fatos Bytyci
THE HAGUE/PRISTINA, Sept 16 (Reuters) – The Kosovo war crimes tribunal on Wednesday will deliver its judgement in the case of former president Hashim Thaci and several wartime commanders accused of murder and torture during the territory’s violent break from Serbia in the 1990s.
Prosecutors are seeking 45-year sentences for Thaci, 58, and three other former commanders of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which fought Serbian troops. The defendants deny all the charges.
The ruling will be closely watched in Kosovo and Serbia, where the legacy of the 1998-99 conflict and Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence remain a source of tension between ethnic Kosovo Albanians and Serbs.
Thaci remains a revered figure for many Kosovo Albanians, while the tribunal itself is deeply unpopular in Kosovo.
In many towns across Kosovo, large screens have been set up counting down to the verdict, and KLA flags have been flown on main streets.
Police said preparations had been made with foreign peacekeeping forces in case protests turned violent. The United States and several other embassies advised citizens to avoid crowds.
Prosecutors in The Hague have said more than 100 political opponents and perceived collaborators with Serbian security forces were killed by KLA forces during the conflict.
Lawyers for Thaci have argued that the accusations are unfounded and amount to an attempt to rewrite history. They said there was no evidence to directly link Thaci to any of the alleged crimes or to conclude that he controlled other KLA commanders.
The Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers was established in 2015 under international pressure to try former KLA fighters for alleged wartime and post-war crimes.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg in The Hague and Fatos Bytyci in Pristina; Writing by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Ros Russell)
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