Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Rubin, who is testifying in the case of former President Hashim Thaçi and other KLA leaders at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, stated that he had been preparing for this moment for years.
A prosecutor asked him about his meetings with Thaçi’s defense team and reminded him that he had said he had spent “hundreds of hours” preparing to serve as a witness in the case.
“Can you tell us what you did during these hundreds of hours, witness?” the prosecutor asked. Rubin explained that he obtained permission from the U.S. State Department to testify in defense of Thaçi.
“I have been very busy with my professional work. I also served as an advisor to Secretary Blinken from 2022 to 2025, and I must say that, out of my own desire to be available in court, I spent many hours ensuring that the State Department would allow me to give this testimony. It was indeed an added burden for me,” he said.
The experienced American diplomat stated that he had started thinking about the Specialist Chambers early on and had waited for years for the trial to begin.
“Five or six years ago, when I first heard about this trial, I began examining the formation and composition of this tribunal. I spoke with academics, consulted with jurists, and also reviewed, to the best of my ability, written articles and documents that are now presented on screens but were not readily available to me at the time. I reread many of these materials, met with the defense team in Washington once or perhaps twice, sometimes for a full day, and thought through the case year after year, preparing for this moment. I anticipated that the trial would open soon, but years passed and nothing happened for a long time. So I spent years reflecting and preparing, especially given that it took five years to assemble a case like this, while the indictment itself had been filed five years earlier,” Rubin said.
He added that eminent international jurists and lawyers had told him that the way Thaçi was arrested and detained was unusual, noting that the trial against him began many years later.
“I did not understand this fully and asked experts in the field whether it was normal. I was told by distinguished international lawyers that it was unusual to treat a statesman who voluntarily submitted himself to the jurisdiction of a court he helped establish while serving as Prime Minister in this way. Meanwhile, this statesman was held in detention for five years before the case was ready,” Rubin said.
