Anger over Thaçi war crimes sentence spills into protests at Kosovo EU mission

The internationally backed Kosovo court's verdict sentencing former President Hashim Thaçi to 25 years in prison for war crimes sparked shock and anger among most Kosovars on Wednesday. Judges of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague found Thaçi and three other former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders guilty of illegal arrests, torture, murder and cruel treatment during the 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia. But among many Kosovo Albanians, Thaçi and his co-defendants are still widely lauded as heroes of the independence movement — and their simmering anger threatened to escalate into wholesale riots.