Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Wednesday by the European Union-backed Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague. He was convicted of four counts of war crimes committed during the 1998-99 war for independence from Serbia: murder, torture, cruel treatment and arbitrary detention.

The court found him guilty of the arbitrary detention of 385 people, cruel treatment of 49 people, torture of 303 detainees and murder of 96 people. Three other former commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were also sentenced on several different charges.

Thaci resigned from office nearly six years ago to face the charges. He had been a senior commander of the KLA, a militant ethnic Albanian force formed in the early 1990s that sought independence for Kosovo from Yugoslavia and Serbia. Kosovo was once part of the former Republic of Yugoslavia.

Both Thaci and prosecutors can appeal. Prosecutors had asked for a stricter sentence. The judgment sparked anger among Thaci's supporters. It was also a crushing blow for a man once embraced by the West, invited to the 1999 peace talks in France and seen as a leader who could guide Kosovo to independence.