FAZ: Despite the verdict against KLA leaders, the struggle of Kosovo Albanians was justified

The struggle of Kosovo Albanians was inevitable and justified, and their crimes were disproportionate to those committed by Serbian forces, writes the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on the occasion of the sentencing to long prison terms of four senior officers of the Kosovo Liberation Army, including former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi.

The newspaper writes that this is a first-instance verdict and that, based on the evidence presented and current knowledge, it appears that the conviction by the Kosovo Specialist Tribunal in The Hague is justified, and that there is little chance the decision will be changed by a higher court.

“But a lighter, fairer sentence? In the light of history, it is at the very least questionable whether the current sentence of 25 years is in any reasonable proportion to the sentences for Serbian criminals,” writes FAZ.

The sentence, the newspaper writes, “must not erase the historical proportions of events in Kosovo in 1999,” where the “conflict was provoked by the Greater Serbian policy” of former “Belgrade strongman Slobodan Milošević” and where Serbian security forces committed disproportionately greater crimes than those attributed to the KLA.

FAZ writes that victims should not be “arbitrarily turned into criminals.”

“That is why the court acted correctly when it emphasized that the Hague is not judging either the Kosovo Albanians or the KLA’s fight for independence,” writes the Frankfurt daily.

That struggle, according to the newspaper, “in light of Serbian oppression, was equally inevitable and justified.”