Former prime minister of Kosovo Ramush Haradinaj was arrested in France on Wednesday on charges of war crimes filed by Serbia. Serbia claims that Haradinaj’s unit, the Black Eagles, tortured and killed Serbian civilians. Kosovo’s current president, Hashim Thaci [official website], condemned the arrest [AP report], calling it a threat to stability in the region. Haradinaj appeared in court on Thursday in France, where he was ordered to be detained while the court decides whether he should be turned over to Serbian officials.

Haradinaj was a senior commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force, that opposed Slobodan Milosevic during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war [BBC backgrounder]. He was tried twice and acquitted of 37 charges of war crimes in both 2008 and 2012 [JURIST reports] by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website].