India, Sept. 17 -- The man who signed Kosovo's declaration of independence, who led the guerrilla campaign that brought it into existence, was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years in prison for murders and tortures his fighters carried out during that same liberation war.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a European Union-funded court sitting in The Hague, found Hashim Thaci, 58, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed between 1998 and 1999, when the Kosovo Liberation Army fought Serbian security forces in a conflict that ended with NATO airstrikes and, eventually, an independent Kosovo in 2008.

Presiding Judge Charles Smith, reading from a 1,400-page judgment that took more than four hours to deliver, said the KLA "was a ser...