Judges of the Supreme Court at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers war crimes court announced on Wednesday that they have upheld the 15-year prison sentence for former Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA commander Salih Mustafa, who was found guilty of arbitrary detention, torture and murder.

The court “rejected the requests for protection of legality, submitted by both Mustafa and the SPO [Specialist Prosecutor’s Office]. These requests were filed in connection with the Court of Appeals’ ruling from September 10 of the previous year [2024], which had imposed a new 15-year sentence on Mustafa,” the Specialist Chambers said.

“The panel determined that Mustafa failed to identify how the 15-year sentence constitutes a violation of the criminal law. Regarding the SPO’s request, the panel concluded that only mere disagreements with particular decisions do not meet the rigorous standards required for a successful request for protection of legality,” the court added. It said the judgment was made on Tuesday,

In December 2022, Mustafa was found guilty of three war crimes, including the arbitrary detention and torture of at least six detainees and the murder of one prisoner.

The judges said Mustafa personally participated in the torture of two detainees.

They also said his failure to order the release of one prisoner when retreating from Serbian forces, who was mistreated by Mustafa’s subordinates for almost three weeks, along with denial of medical care, directly led to his death.

The court found that he committed crimes against civilian prisoners at a KLA detention centre in the village of Zllash/Zlas while he was a commander in the KLA’s Llap Operation Zone in north-east Kosovo,.

Mustafa, the first KLA officer ever convicted of war crimes by the Hague-based court, was initially sentenced to 26 years in prison in December 2022.

In December 2023, the sentence was cut to 22 years after judges found that people convicted in similar cases in Kosovo were being given shorter sentences.

In July 2024, Kosovo’s Supreme Court ruled that 22 years was also higher than sentences in similar cases, returning the case to the appeals judges.

In September 2024, the Appeals Panel at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers reduced the jail sentence handed down to Mustafa, known as “Commander Cali”, to 15 years, cutting the penalty by seven years. This was the second time that Mustafa’s sentence was reduced.

The trial judges in April 2023 ordered Mustafa to pay 207,000 euros for the harm inflicted on the victims, a ruling that the appeals judges did not overturn. In March 2024, BIRN reported that none of the victims had received any of the money.

The Specialist Chambers were established in 2015 by the Kosovo Assembly and investigate the alleged crimes of members of the KLA, committed against ethnic minorities and political rivals in the years 1998-2000.

The Specialist Chambers are part of Kosovo’s judicial system but are located in the Netherlands and staffed by internationals, established under pressure from the country’s Western allies, who believe Kosovo’s own justice system is not robust enough to try KLA cases and protect witnesses from intimidation.

Many Kosovo Albanians believe the court is ethnically biased and denigrates the KLA’s just war against Serbian repression.