The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a body of the United Nations that was established to prosecute the war crimes that had been committed during the Yugoslav Wars and to try their perpetrators. The tribunal was an ad hoc court located in The Hague, Netherlands.
The Kosovo Liberation Army was an ethnic Albanian separatist militia that sought the separation of Kosovo, the vast majority of which is inhabited by Albanians, from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and Serbia during the 1990s. Albanian nationalism was a central tenet of the KLA and many in its ranks supported the creation of a Greater Albania, which would encompass all Albanians in the Balkans, stressing Albanian culture, ethnicity and nation.
The Račak massacre or Račak operation was the massacre of 45 Kosovo Albanians that took place in the village of Račak in central Kosovo in January 1999. The massacre was perpetrated by Serbian security forces in response to Albanian separatist activity in the region. The Serbian government refused to let a war crimes prosecutor visit the site, and maintained that the casualties were all members of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) killed in combat with state security forces.
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that took place in the SFR Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001. The conflicts both led up to and resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in mid-1991, into six independent countries matching the six entities known as republics that had previously constituted Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Macedonia. SFR Yugoslavia's constituent republics declared independence due to unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, which fuelled the wars. While most of the conflicts ended through peace accords that involved full international recognition of new states, they resulted in a massive number of deaths as well as severe economic damage to the region.
Haradin Bala, also known as Shala, was a Kosovo Albanian former commander of the Albanian militant organization Kosovo Liberation Army.
Ramush Haradinaj is a Kosovo Albanian politician, leader of the AAK party, and the third prime minister of Kosovo. He is a former officer and leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and previously served as Prime Minister of Kosovo between 2004 and 2005.
Hashim Thaçi is a Kosovar Albanian politician who was the president of Kosovo from April 2016 until his resignation on 5 November 2020 to face a war crimes tribunal. He was the first prime minister of Kosovo and the Foreign minister and deputy prime minister in the new cabinet led by Isa Mustafa, which assumed office on 12 December 2014.
The Krusha massacres near Rahovec, Kosovo, were two massacres that took place during the Kosovo War on the afternoon of 25 March 1999, the day after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began.
Sylejman Selimi is the former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who was convicted of war crimes for the torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners at the Likovac detention center during the Kosovo War. After the war, he served as Security Force of the Republic of Kosovo; he left this position in 2011 and became the ambassador to Albania.
Numerous war crimes were committed by all sides during the Kosovo War, which lasted from 28 February 1998 until 11 June 1999. According to Human Rights Watch, the vast majority of abuses were attributable to the government of Slobodan Milošević, mainly perpetrated by the Serbian police, the Yugoslav army, and Serb paramilitary units. During the war, regime forces killed between 7,000–9,000 Kosovar Albanians, engaged in countless acts of rape, destroyed entire villages, and displaced nearly one million people. The Kosovo Liberation Army has also been implicated in atrocities, such as kidnappings and summary executions of civilians. Moreover, the NATO bombing campaign has been harshly criticized by human rights organizations and the Serbian government for causing roughly 500 civilian casualties.
The war crimes trial of Slobodan Milošević, the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) lasted for just over four years from 2002 until his death in 2006. Milošević faced 66 counts of crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes committed during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. He pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Vladimir Lazarević is a Serbian colonel general of the Third Army Corps, and later the commander of the Priština Corps of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 2003 and was convicted in 2009 of command responsibility for war crimes against Kosovo Albanians during the Kosovo War.
The Batajnica mass graves are mass graves that were found in 2001 near Batajnica, a suburb of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The graves contained the bodies of 744 Kosovar Albanians civilians that were killed during the Kosovo War. The mass graves were found on the training grounds of the Yugoslav Special Anti-Terrorist Unit (SAJ). Dead bodies were brought to the site by trucks from Kosovo; most were incinerated before burial. After the war, SAJ restricted investigators' access to the firing range, and continued live-firing exercises whilst forensic teams tried to investigate the massacre.
Kadri Veseli is a Kosovar politician, former Chairman of the Assembly of Kosovo and the Kosovo Intelligence Service. He is the leader of the Democratic Party of Kosovo. Veseli was one of the founders and leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army. He also was the chief of the Kosovo Intelligence Service, a post-war state intelligence organisation. In 2020, he was indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Kosovo War.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) is a court of Kosovo, located in The Hague (Netherlands), hosting four Specialist Chambers and the Specialist Prosecutors Office, which may perform their activities either in the Netherlands or in Kosovo. The court is currently set up for delegating the trials of the crimes committed by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic-Albanian paramilitary organisation which sought the separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia during the 1990s and the eventual creation of a Greater Albania. The alleged crimes concern the period 1998–2000, during and at the end of the Kosovo war and directed afterwards against "ethnic minorities and political opponents". The court was formally established in 2016. It is separate from other Kosovar institutions, and independent. It is composed of a Specialist Prosecutor's Office and four Specialist Chambers, with themselves comprising Judges' Chambers and a Registry.
Lahi Brahimaj, known by the nickname Magjupi, was a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commander during the Kosovo War (1998–99). A Kosovo Albanian, Brahimaj was born in Jablanica, a village in Gjakova, SFR Yugoslavia. He is a close relative of Ramush Haradinaj, the KLA commander of the Dukagjin Zone. During the Kosovo War he was the deputy commander of the Operational Staff of the Dukagjin Zone, as well as the intermediary between the Dukagjin Zone Staff and the KLA Main Staff, and the manager of a prison in Jablanica. After the war he became an officer in the Kosovo Protection Corps. On 4 March 2005, the ICTY raised indictments against Ramush Haradinaj, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj on 37 counts, including crimes against humanity, violation of the law and custom of war. They were accused of crimes committed between 1 March and 30 September 1998. The three surrendered on 9 March 2005. After four years of trial, in 2008, Haradinaj and Balaj were deemed innocent and freed. Meanwhile, Brahimaj was sentenced to six years for cruel treatment and torture as violations of the laws or customs of war in two counts.
John Luman Smith is an American attorney who has served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. attorney, acting U.S. attorney, and head of the department's Public Integrity Section. He was also the chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, an international tribunal at The Hague tasked with investigating and prosecuting war crimes in the Kosovo War.
Rustem Mustafa, also known Remi, was the former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army's (KLA) Llap Operational Zone. Born in Kosovo, Mustafa played a significant role in the armed conflict between Serbian forces and the KLA during the late 1990s.
The Zllash torture incident occurred during the Kosovo War, involving the torture of six individuals suspected of collaboration, ultimately resulting in the murder of one victim. The incident was carried out by the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK), specifically the Guerria-BIA unit under the leadership of Salih Mustafa.
Kosovo 
