This is the Kosovo tribunal's first verdict in a war crime case.
"The Trial Panel found Mr. Mustafa guilty of the war crimes of arbitrary detention, torture and murder and sentenced him to a prison sentence of 26 years," the court said.
The crimes committed by Mustafa took place in 1999 near the settlement of Zlas, around 10 miles east of Pristina. According to the verdict, Malih, as "the only and overall commander" of a KLA unit, with the exclusive authority to issue orders to his subordinates and to discipline them during the period when the crimes were committed by the unit.
Mustafa was detained by the international court's Specialist Prosecutor's Office in Pristina in September 2020 and immediately sent to The Hague in custody. It has been the first arrest of a former KLA fighter for a tribunal.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers was established in 2017 to investigate crimes committed by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA was an ethnic-Albanian paramilitary group, which fought for the separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia during the 1990s.