Kosovo ex-president Thaci visits father's tomb after Hague court bars him from attending funeral

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Hashim Thaci, a former president of Kosovo who is facing war crime charges, was temporarily released from custody at a court based in the Netherlands on Friday to visit the tomb of his father who died last weekend.

Thaci, 56, wasn't allowed to attend Tuesday's funeral, which leaders and local politicians from Kosovo and neighboring Albania were present for. Kosovo Justice Minister Albulena Haxhiu complained to the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague that Thaci was barred from going.

“I was the last to come, dad,” Thaci wrote on the wreath he put at his father’s tomb on Friday in the village of Buroje, 70 kilometers (44 miles) west of the capital, Pristina. He was accompanied by police officers from the Kosovo-based European Union Rule of Law mission, known as EULEX.

Thaci was then taken to his house, where only close relatives could meet with him. It wasn't immediately clear when he would be returned to the custody of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers court in The Hague.

His father, Haxhi Thaci, died on March 16 at age 87.

Three days before his father’s death, Hashim Thaci was allowed to visit his father for about three hours at a public hospital in Pristina accompanied by close family members.

Thaci and other senior leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, which waged Kosovo’s 1998-99 war for independence from Serbia, have been in custody in The Hague since November 2020. They face charges including murder, torture and persecution during and after the war.

The court and a linked prosecutor’s office were created after a 2011 report by the Council of Europe, a human rights body, that included allegations that KLA fighters trafficked human organs taken from prisoners and killed Serbs and fellow ethnic Albanians. The organ harvesting allegations haven't been included in indictments issued by the court.

Around 11,400 people who died in the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo were ethnic Albanians. A 78-day NATO air campaign against Serbian troops ended the fighting, but tensions between Kosovo and Serbia remain tense.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, a move Belgrade and its key allies Russia and China refuse to recognize.

A European Union-facilitated dialogue on normalization of their ties, which started in 2011, has given scarce results.