Fatmir Limaj is accused, along with Isak Musliu and Haradin Bala, his alleged subordinates at the time, of operating a brutal makeshift detention centre in the village of Lapusnik from May to July that year.
Prosecutors allege that Serb civilians and Albanians suspected of collaborating with the Belgrade security forces were held at the facility in horrific conditions and were starved, beaten to death and shot.
Limaj and Bala are also charged in connection with the massacre of at least ten detainees, which allegedly occurred after the prison was hurriedly closed down in the face of a Serb offensive in late July.
Speaking in court this week, Limaj dismissed the idea that he might have been involved in any such prison camp as “absurd”.
And he insisted he was nowhere near Lapusnik on the day the final round of killings is said to have taken place.
He also played down his command role in the KLA at the time, saying that the organisation did not begin to develop a proper military structure until later in 1998. Limaj is charged partly on the basis of prosecution claims that he was the regional KLA commander responsible for the village of Lapusnik.
With all this week taken up with questioning by defence lawyers, prosecutors will have to wait until May 23 to confront Limaj with the reams of documents and witness statements which they believe prove he is lying.
Limaj told judges that he first took up arms for the KLA in 1998, having returned from a brief stint in Switzerland. He had sought political asylum in Geneva, he said, after Serb security forces raided his family home in an attempt to arrest him in 1997 and jailed his father and brother.
He rejected prosecution claims that his return to Kosovo came in response to an order issued by the KLA general staff. In fact, he said, he decided to go back himself after hearing that there had been an escalation of violence in the region.
He said he had heard talk at the time of an elusive KLA command body known as the general staff. And he also spoke about the existence of a training programmes and supply routes for munitions.
But he claimed that the group of men he worked with, at least in the early days after his return to Kosovo, acted completely independently and received orders from no one.
“Everything was done on the basis of friendly relations,” he insisted.
Limaj is charged partly on the grounds of command responsibility, the idea that a commander can be made to answer for crimes committed by his subordinates if he failed either to prevent them or to punish the perpetrators afterwards.
In order to employ this concept, prosecutors obviously need to show that he operated in the context of some sort of command structure at the time.
And for the charges in question to be valid, they also need to prove that the alleged crimes occurred in the context of an armed conflict, which includes showing that the KLA during that time period was an “organised armed group”.
In his opening statement, prosecutor Andrew Cayley argued that for these purposes it is not necessary to show that the Albanian rebels in 1998 were comparable with a modern, sophisticated army.
But defence lawyers have pressed the point, suggesting that during the time period referred to in the indictment, the organisation Limaj belonged to was really little more than a ragtag bunch of men with guns.
Asked about his activities specifically in relation to Lapusnik, Limaj admitted that he “often” visited the village between May and July 1998. But he firmly denied helping to establish or run any prison camp in the area, insisting that local KLA soldiers had far more pressing priorities at the time.
And he insisted that on July 26 – the day Lapusnik fell to the Serbs and the camp guards are alleged to have massacred a group of prisoners – he was in Klecke recovering from a fainting fit that he had suffered the day before.
Prosecutors claim that camp survivors’ testimonies show that, on the day in question, Limaj met up with the group of prisoners that was being marched into the mountains to be divided up into those who would be released and those who would be shot.
They allege that he provided a soldier who went off with the group and helped carry out the massacre. And they also claim those who were released were given a note explaining that they had been freed on the authority of “Celiku”, a nickname Limaj admits using at the time.
Later in the week, questioning turned to the subject of Limaj’s career as a politician following the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo in 1999, focusing on his appearances on television, on radio and in campaign posters.
Defence lawyers insist that many witnesses who have identified Limaj in the course of the trial in fact only recognise him from these sources, or because they have seen media coverage of the Hague proceedings against him.
Counsel also revealed that later in the trial they will be calling Professor Willem Wagenaar, an expert in the psychology of law from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, to speak about issues relating to identification.
Prosecutors are set to begin their cross-examination of Limaj on May 23.
Michael Farquhar is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
