During closing statements at trial of former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and three others at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, prosecutors insisted the defendants had command responsibility for crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA fighters.

The prosecutors also insisted that the defendants often witnessed or participated in mistreatment of detainees.

Prosecutor Matt Halling told the court on Tuesday that Thaci did not only make “political or neutral” contributions to the KLA’s war, as the defence has argued.

“Thaci was a direct supporter of the purpose of the JCE [joint criminal enterprise]. You can see this better in the way he talks about the [Democratic League of Kosovo] LDK” – one of the groups targeted as opponents of the KLA.

Halling claimed that “it is not a neutral contribution to interrogate, threaten and beat people”.

According to the indictment, the defendants were members of a joint criminal enterprise that “conducted a campaign of persecution against opponents” between at least March 1998 and September 1999.

Thaci, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi are accused of having individual and command responsibility for crimes committed against prisoners held at KLA detention facilities in Kosovo and in neighbouring Albania, including 102 murders.

The prosecution says the opponents were people who the KLA perceived as “collaborating or associating” with Yugoslav forces, officials or state institutions, including Serbian police.

The prosecution said the KLA also considered as opponents people who did not support the aims and methods of the guerrillas or the Provisional Government of Kosovo, which Thaci headed from March 1999, while also KLA commander-in-chief.

These “opponents” included people associated with the LDK, a rival political party, and “persons of Serb, Roma, and other ethnicities”, according to the prosecution.

Halling told the court that the high-level international figures who testified in Thaci’s defence “don’t understand that Thaci was able to mask what was actually happening and this influenced their worldview to understand how the KLA really functioned”. Defence witnesses included former US Assistant Secretary of State James Rubin and former NATO commander Wesley Clark, who told the court that Thaci did not have power or authority over KLA fighters.

The defence has maintained that the KLA did not have a proper command structure, and that the accused did not have the authority to hold the guerrilla fighters accountable.

Halling told the court that the defence’s claim about Veseli not being in Kosovo “does not change the situation. Veseli could exercise his powers in Kosovo wherever he was and whenever he wanted.”

Referring to Krasniqi, the KLA’s spokesperson, Halling cited as evidence “communiques calling for the killing of collaborators, regulations that codified merciless treatment, appointments of those advancing the criminal objectives to higher echelons of responsibility, decisions to take and execute Serb civilians”.

He added that “there is no ambiguity in publicly warning collaborators that they would be killed if they continue to follow the wrong path”.

Regarding Selimi, Halling said that “the commitment to the joint criminal enterprise can finally be seen in his conduct as minister of public order”. He told the court that  Selimi did not comply with the UN resolution ending the war, but established an illegal police force.