The former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is responsible for war crimes committed during the NATO-backed insurgent group’s fight for the region’s independence from Serbia in the 1990s, a Hague-based special tribunal has ruled.

Hashim Thaci, who served as the first prime minister and later president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo, was found guilty of the murder of 96 political opponents and suspected Serbian collaborators, according to the verdict. He was also convicted of unlawfully detaining and torturing hundreds of people.

The 58-year-old Thaci, who was advised and armed by the US during the break-up of Yugoslavia, was supported in court by some of the same figures, but was nevertheless sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Thaci’s defense argued that senior figures in the KLA could not control rank-and-file separatist fighters and thus could not be held responsible for crimes committed under their leadership. Lawyers described the group as lacking a strict military hierarchy during the 1998-99 conflict. Thaci and three other former KLA leaders who have been tried in The Hague are widely regarded as heroes in Kosovo, though news of the conviction brought hundreds out in violent protest in Pristina.

NATO’s bombing campaign targeting Serbia, which Washington and its European allies framed as a humanitarian intervention, ensured KLA’s victory. Belgrade does not recognize Kosovo as an independent state, having rejected the unilateral declaration passed by the breakaway entity’s parliament in 2008.

The US, the UK, France, Germany, and many other Western and European nations, however, officially recognize Kosovo’s independence. Camp Bondsteel, the headquarters of NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), is the largest American military base in the Balkans.

Among the more gruesome claims related to the Kosovo conflict was that the KLA harvested organs from Serbian prisoners and sold them on the black market, which former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Carla Del Ponte detailed in her 2008 memoir.

The allegations were further substantiated in a 2010 European Council report, which also implicated former Thaci subordinates in the trafficking of humans, drug and arms, as well as protection rackets and other organized crime. His government allegedly ensured impunity for those “mafia-like” networks, the document said.

The Serbian government accused the West of pursuing selective justice in the wake of the Balkan wars, allegedly focusing on Serbian suspects and overlooking crimes attributed to their opponents.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC), where Thaci was tried, was set up in The Hague in 2016, after earlier cases failed in Kosovo due to alleged political interference and witness intimidation.