John Stewart Duncan, who was a political adviser to former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, stated during the first part of his testimony in The Hague that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had a heterogeneous composition.

“There was a group of very heterogeneous people, and it changed over time. The composition of the main actors, especially when ethnic cleansing began to escalate, had several layers. To give a concrete example, there were people who had been soldiers in the Yugoslav army, lawyers, doctors, journalists, and others whose families had been mistreated. Their motives for taking up arms were sometimes different,” he said.

He also mentioned the victims of sexual violence during the Kosovo war.

“There were women in the KLA. Some had been sexually abused, sexually assaulted. For an Albanian woman to be sexually abused is terrible… I met many of these women, and they were very impressive,” he emphasized.

The British witness’s testimony comes after former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Rubin and former legal adviser to the Kosovo delegation in the Rambouillet negotiations, Paul Williams, were heard at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague.

The defense’s presentation of evidence began a week ago, on September 15. Thaçi’s defense has planned to present a total of 11 witnesses, after which two more witnesses called by Jakup Krasniqi’s defense are expected to testify.

The presentation of the defense evidence is expected to conclude by mid-November, while the trial chamber expects the defense teams to submit their final briefs by December 22 of this year.

Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi, and Rexhep Selimi are accused of alleged war crimes. They have been in detention since November 2020.