Law is inherently political. Its tenets, institutions and its enforcement are always influenced by interests and power – international law especially. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers.

The sentencing of former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders Hashim Thaci and Jakup Krasniqi to 25 years, Kadri Veseli to 18 years and Rexhep Selemi to 13 years, is the culmination of a process that had little to do with the pursuit of justice. The ‘Special Court’, as it is most commonly known, has to be understood as the product of a political strategy pursued by powerful Western states.

The court was established amidst widespread public outrage in Kosovo. Kosovo’s political leaders were also against it, and yet eventually the country’s parliament, the Assembly, voted to establish it. Why? The answer has always been obvious; Kosovo’s Western allies, especially the US, demanded it be created and issued a range of threats to coerce Kosovo’s government into doing so. At the time, Thaci described it as “the biggest injustice and insult which could be done to Kosovo and its people” and admitted that he only supported the court’s creation “under great pressure from the international community”.

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