On 3 April 2023, the much-anticipated trial against Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi started at the Kosovo Specialist Chamber (‘KSC’). In its opening statement, the Prosecution told the judges that each accused is criminally responsible of four counts of war crimes – to wit: illegal and arbitrary arrest and detention, cruel treatment, torture and…

On 17 November 2022, some eight years after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (‘MH17’) was shot down in eastern Ukraine, the Hague District Court delivered a verdict against the four accused in the MH17 Trial: Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy, Leonid Kharchenko and Oleg Pulatov. The first three were found guilty of the charged crimes – viz.,…

Introduction Over the past 5 months, the Prosecutor of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers ('KSC') and defence counsels for multiple accused have been filing submissions on a legal question that is of utmost importance for the work of the Court: to what extent can the KSC apply customary international law (‘CIL’)? A series of jurisdictional motions, the…