\u201cI expect to be acquitted of every charge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearly six years have passed since the four defendants were arrested and the verdict was scheduled. Eliza Hoxha described the charges over that period as \u201cuntenable, falling one after another,\u201d and said September 16 \u201cmust be the end of this dark saga.\u201d She stressed that the platform does not want to prejudge the court\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout prejudging the judiciary\u2019s decision and without interfering in the judicial process, we will keep making sure the voice of citizens is heard, for justice, dignity, memory and respect for our history.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Year of Mobilization Ahead of the Verdict<\/p>\n
According to reporting by the KoSSev news portal, today\u2019s campaign is the final stage of a mobilization effort that has been building for nearly a year. The first major show of support came in The Hague on September 14, 2025, the day before the start of Thaci\u2019s defense case, when thousands of Albanians from Kosovo, the region and the diaspora gathered under the slogan \u201cJustice for the KLA\u201d and rejected what they called at the time the \u201ccriminalization of the KLA.\u201d Over the following months, former American and British officials, among them James Rubin, Paul Williams and John Duncan, testified before the court, and the defense concluded its evidence in early December.<\/p>\n
A new, stronger wave of mobilization followed in early February 2026, after prosecutors requested 45 years in prison for each defendant. Reaction in Pristina at the time was nearly unanimous, spanning the ruling party, the opposition and associations linked to the KLA, with messages describing the case as \u201ca just struggle\u201d and an attempt to \u201cequate victim and aggressor.\u201d When the verdict\u2019s postponement was announced in May 2026, a new wave of criticism followed, targeting the work of the Specialist Chambers. Support spread beyond Kosovo in July, when hundreds of Albanians gathered in Zadar under the banner \u201cFreedom for the Liberators.\u201d<\/p>\n
We previously reported on what Thaci expects from the trial\u2019s outcome in \u201cThaci Expects Acquittal Ahead of September 16 Verdict in The Hague.\u201d The date has since been confirmed, and the campaign launching today is the first visible sign that preparations in Pristina for that day are accelerating, a month before the verdict is actually handed down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI expect to be acquitted of every charge.\u201d Nearly six years have passed since the four defendants were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[25645,1400,3817,1345,25548,42],"class_list":["post-39642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-hague","tag-hague-tribunal","tag-hashim-thaci","tag-kla","tag-kosovo","tag-specialist-chambers","tag-the-hague"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}