Kosovo fighter's sentence cut to 13 years despite court upholding convictions for murder and torture
Pjetër Shala was convicted a year ago for his role in the abuse of detainees being held by the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, at a makeshift jail in a metal factory in Kukës, northern Albania, during Kosovo's 1999 war for independence from Serbia. The 62-year-old Shala watched Monday's hearing at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers by videoconference and shook his head after Judge Kai Ambos of Germany rejected large parts of his appeal and handed down the new sentence.
The appeals panel, however, ruled that trial judges wrongly found him guilty of five cases of torture and two of arbitrary detention, saying there was insufficient evidence, but they upheld his convictions on the same counts for other detainees and for his role in the murder of one detainee who was shot and then denied medical treatment. In reducing his sentence, the three-judge appeals panel ruled that trial judges didn't give sufficient weight to the fact that Shala didn't hold a command role when the man was murdered. The appeals judges also said that the original 18-year sentence was out of reasonable proportion to comparable cases, the court said in a statement.
Kosovo's 1998-1999 fight to break away from Serbia was led by the KLA, whose main leaders, including former President Hashim Thaci, are now being tried in The Hague. More than 13,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, died during the war before a NATO bombing campaign forced Serbia to pull its troops out of the country and to cede control to the United Nations and NATO. Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, which was recognized by the United States and most of the West, but not by Serbia or its allies Russia and China.
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