Kosovo rushes war crimes court change to avoid snap poll

PIRISTINA

Kosovo's newly elected President Justina Shiroka Pula receives a bouquet of flowers during an extraordinary parliament session in Pristina on October 7, 2026. (Photo by Armend NIMANI / AFP)

Kosovo parliament voted to curb the powers of its special war crimes court in a last-minute session that narrowly avoided another governmental collapse in the early hours of Oct. 7.

The amendment, which was tightly negotiated ahead of a looming deadline to elect the country’s president at midnight, came after the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) found four senior guerrilla figures guilty of war crimes last month.

The conviction of the men, which included former President Hashim Thaci, sparked outrage in a country where the former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) figures are largely viewed as heroes.

Protests broke out after Thaci was sentenced to 25 years for crimes committed during the struggle for independence from Serbia in the 1990s.

The amendment was passed minutes before parliament’s deadline to elect its president, a trigger that had threatened to send voters back to the polls for a fourth time in less than two years.

In a deal with the opposition, Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s government secured the two-thirds majority needed to elect Justina Shiroka Pula as president, ending a long-running political crisis.

Opposition parties and war veteran organizations have long criticized the KSC, which is established under Kosovo law but based in The Hague.

According to the original text of the amendment, the court, which was specifically set up to prosecute crimes committed by ethnic Albanian guerrilla fighters during the war, will have its powers dramatically shrunk, with its jurisdiction would be limited to crimes committed inside Kosovo in the immediate aftermath of the war.