THE HAGUE: Kosovo's ex-president Hashim Thaci, whose war crimes trial enters its closing phase in The Hague on Monday, is a former rebel leader who fought for his country's independence and then dominated its politics for more than two decades.
Thaci is widely seen as a guerrilla hero inside the Balkan country for his leadership of the pro-independence ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the 1998-1999 war with Serbia.
The tall 57-year-old -- who served more than seven years as prime minister -- saw his popularity soar when he helped oversee Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008.
But his image was tarnished by a 2010 Council of Europe report that linked him to organised crime and politically-motivated murders of Serb, Albanian and Roma civilians during and immediately after the war.
In the years since, he has also faced accusations of corruption, clientelism and cynical politicking that have blighted Kosovo's first decade of independence.
But it was the war-era allegations that abruptly ended his presidency and have seen him held for over five years in The Hague.
Thaci resigned as head of state in 2020 and handed himself over after a judge confirmed an indictment against him for crimes including murder, torture, illegal detention and enforced disappearances.
"These are not easy moments for me and my family, and for those who have supported and believed in me in the past three decades of our struggle for freedom, independence and nation-building," he said announcing his surrender to the court.
'George Washington of Kosovo'
Born on April 24, 1968, in the Drenica region of western Kosovo -- a hotbed of separatism and rebellion among its ethnic Albanian community -- Thaci was involved in passive resistance against the Belgrade authorities as a student from the early 1990s.
He later moved to Switzerland, home to a large Albanian diaspora, where he studied history.
He became frustrated by the policy of peaceful resistance to Belgrade's repression of ethnic Albanians espoused by the late Kosovo president Ibrahim Rugova.
Instead he gathered other like-minded ethnic Albanians into an underground guerrilla army, the KLA, to take on the forces of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
Thaci earned the nom de guerre "Snake" during the conflict, when he served as the KLA's political leader.
More than 13,000 people, mainly ethnic Albanians, were killed in the war that ended after NATO intervened in 1999, pushing out Serb forces and establishing a United Nations administration over Kosovo.
International courts later convicted several senior Serbian army and police officials for crimes committed during the conflict.
Thaci then laid down his guns and donned a suit to enter politics, leading then-US vice president Joe Biden to hail him as the "George Washington of Kosovo" during a visit to the White House.
He became premier after the November 2007 election a year after Rugova's death. The writer and academic regarded as the father of the nation was unbeatable in all post-war polls.
Three months later, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia.
He remained at the heart of power in Kosovo, being elected as president in 2016, despite accusations of corruption from his critics. He has always denied any wrongdoing during the war, describing it as a "just" rebellion against Serbian repression.
"Political mistakes in peace I could have made, but war crimes, never," he said in 2020, as he delivered on his promise to "immediately resign" if an indictment against him was confirmed.
"I will not face justice from this office," he said.