While Thaci and the others went on to be seen as guerrilla heroes, prosecutors said the ethnic Albanian KLA openly enforced a brutal reign of imprisonment, torture and killings to tighten their grip on power during and after the 1998-1999 war. "Victims were often targeted simply because of an association with Serbia, as Thaci's rebel KLA battled Serb forces for the independence of the southern province in a bitter conflict that claimed more than 13,000 lives.