Judges have ruled that Pjeter Shala committed war crimes during the 1998-99 Kosovo uprising against Serbian troops.

Judges at the Kosovo tribunal in The Hague have sentenced former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) member Pjeter Shala to 18 years in prison for war crimes committed during the 1998-99 Kosovo uprising against Serbian troops.

Shala was convicted of war crimes including torture, murder and arbitrary detention, committed as he ran a makeshift prison where people were abused and at least one man was killed.

Shala maintained his innocence throughout his trial. His lawyers argued that he was not present when crimes were committed nor had he participated in them.

The judges, however, ruled that he was “beyond reasonable doubt” part of a criminal group that detained and severely mistreated at least 18 people it considered to be spies or collaborators with Serbs.

“Having considered all the evidence, the panel finds you, Mr Pjeter Shala guilty … of war crimes,” Judge Mappie Veldt-Foglia told the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Tuesday.

Shala, 60, also known as “Commander Wolf”, was a local military leader in western Kosovo during the conflict.

Drama erupted in the courtroom after Shala, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and purple tie loudly started talking to the judges during sentencing and had to be silenced by the judge.

He eventually calmed down after speaking briefly to his defence lawyers who argued that he was not present when crimes were committed nor had he participated in them.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a war crimes court seated in the Netherlands and staffed by international judges and lawyers, was set up in 2015 to handle cases under Kosovo law against fighters of the KLA.

It is separate from a UN tribunal, also located in The Hague, which prosecuted nationals from the former Yugoslavia over the 1990s Balkans wars, including several Serb officials and one former KLA member for crimes committed in the Kosovo conflict.

More than 13,000 people are believed to have died during the 1998-99 Kosovo uprising against Serbian troops led by then-President Slobodan Milosevic. The former Serbian province eventually declared independence in 2008, in a move not recognised by Belgrade.