EXCLUSIVE: Kosovo Liberation Army Ran Torture Camps in Albania

EXCLUSIVE: Kosovo Liberation Army Ran Torture Camps in Albania

Kukes, Bajram Curri, Tropoja, Kruma, Prizren, Pristina and Tirana 09 April 2009 By Altin Raxhimi, Michael Montgomery and Vladimir Karaj

The building that served as a KLA prison at the factory compound in Kukes


The Kosovo Liberation Army maintained a network of prisons in their bases in Albania and Kosovo during and after the conflict of 1999, eyewitnesses allege. Only now are the details of what occurred there emerging.
In a run-down industrial compound with shattered windows and peeling plaster in Kukes, Albania, chickens rummage for food and two trucks sit idle in a courtyard surrounded by rusted warehouses and a crumbling two-story supply building.

In the middle of the compound stands a cinderblock shack that was once the office of a mechanical plant that produced everything from manhole covers to elevator cages.

But, during the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, from March to June 1999, this facility took on another purpose. It was occupied by a guerrilla force, the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, as a support base for their operations across the border in Serbian-ruled Kosovo.

But the factory was not merely the headquarters for guerrillas fighting the regime of Slobodan Milosevic to secure the independence of Kosovo from Serbia.

It assumed more sinister purposes: dozens of civilians, mainly Kosovo Albanians suspected of collaboration, but also Serbs and Roma were held captive there, beaten and tortured. Some were killed, their remains never recovered. The men who allegedly directed the abuses were officers of the KLA.

At least 25 people were imprisoned in Kukes, witnesses say. Amongst them were three Kosovo Albanian women. In the camp at least 18 people were killed, while others were later rescued by NATO troops.

It appears that Kukes housed one of a number of secret detention centres in Albania and Kosovo, and that prisoners were transferred from one facility to another.

Even after the NATO interventions, a camp was maintained in Baballoq/Babaloc in Kosovo, holding around 30 Serb and Roma prisoners, whose current whereabouts are unknown. Other camps in Albania may have held Serbs kidnapped in Kosovo after the war, according to four sources.

The names of several alleged perpetrators have been known to UNMIK for some time. One of them is still holding a high position in the Kosovo judiciary, Balkan Insight understands.

Bislim Zyrapi, an official of the Kosovo Interior Ministry, who was responsible for KLA operations in Kukes, told Balkan Insight that there were no people killed, either at the base or outside of it.

Two of the KLA’s former top leaders rejected the allegations in separate interviews with the BBC.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, who was then the political director of the KLA, and Agim Ceku, former Prime Minister and former chief of the KLA headquarters, told the BBC they were not aware of any KLA prisons where captives were abused or where civilians were held.

Thaci said he was aware that individuals had “abused KLA uniforms” after the war, but said the KLA had distanced itself from such acts. He added that such abuse was “minimal”. Ceku said that the KLA fought a “clean war”.

However, Jose Pablo Baraybar, the chief of the Office of Missing Persons and Forensics within UNMIK for five years, says: “There were people that are certainly alive that were in Kukes, in that camp, as prisoners. Those people saw other people there, both Albanians and non-Albanians. There were members of the KLA leadership going through that camp. Many names were mentioned, and I would say that that is an established fact.”

Baraybar tracked missing citizens in Kosovo and across the border in Albania.

Karin Limdal, spokeswoman for the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, told Balkan Insight that the mission is aware of the allegations concerning the Kukes case, and that prosecutors are looking at the evidence to see if they can bring indictments.

YELLOW MERCEDES OF DEATH

These grave allegations about the Kukes camp, in the north west of Albania, are based on interviews with several sources: two eyewitnesses – one former inmate and one member of the KLA, records from a cemetery in Albania and UN documents that we have gained access to, which detail the testimonies of people ill-treated in Kukes.

Together, they paint a portrait of a brutal prison regime that is at odds with the claims of former KLA leaders, who say they adhered to international human rights conventions and never detained civilians.

The abuses in Kukes may not have been isolated events. According to former KLA fighters who talked to us, as well as independent testimony provided to UN investigators, the KLA maintained a loose network of at least six secret jails in the dozen or so bases they operated in Albania and the two they had in Kosovo during and after the 1999 war.

Those jails were used for interrogations that routinely included torture, according to sources interviewed for this story.

Most former KLA soldiers we interviewed are proud of their war with the Serbian forces, whose bloody actions forced the mass flight of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians from their homes in 1999.

But some said they felt shamed by what some KLA commanders and leaders had done under the cover of war.

“It didn’t seem strange at the time,” one former KLA soldier, who witnessed the events, said. “But now, looking back, I know that some of the things that were done to innocent civilians were wrong. But the people who did those things act as if nothing happened, and continue to hurt their own people, Albanians.”

Another eyewitness, a Kosovo Albanian, says he was held at the KLA base in Kukes on the pretext of being a Serbian spy, an allegation he vehemently denies.

This man, who did not wish to be named, described witnessing KLA soldiers abusing and torturing prisoners at the base for weeks, often under the supervision of KLA officers.

“I saw people being beaten, stabbed, hit with batons,” he said. “I saw people left without food for five or six days. I saw coffins being thrown in graves. I’ve seen people killed.”

This man claimed most of the captives held at Kukes were non-combatant civilians, mainly Albanians accused of working for the regime, and some Roma. There were also some KLA soldiers, imprisoned for disciplinary measures.

According to both sources, three prisoners were Kosovo Albanian women. Two were Roma from Prizren. The rest were young Kosovo Albanian males, aged between 20 and 27, all accused of collaborating with Serbian forces. The inmate said he also heard shouts in Serbian from prisoners who were being tortured a short distance away from the compound.

The inmate said that he heard “people crying and yelling at being tortured, and I could specifically distinguish native Serbian being spoken there.”

He said some Kosovo Albanian prisoners were shot or beaten to death on the base, while others were driven off in a yellow Mercedes. One Kosovo Albanian prisoner died in front of him and five other inmates, after being shot in the calf by his interrogators and then left untreated.

The records of the cemetery in Kukes shed light on the man who died after being shot in the calf.

According to cemetery records, he was buried on June 6th 1999, four days before Serbian forces pulled out of Kosovo, in a plot reserved for Kosovo Albanians who died in Albania during the conflict ,.

“Every time I saw the yellow Mercedes, someone was taken in that car and then I would never see that person again,” he said. “They were never found.”

The same former inmate said he believed the people had been taken captive for various reasons, which included revenge and greed, as well as allegations that they were Serbian spies.

One prisoner had worked as a policeman in the western town of Gjakova/Djakovica under the Milosevic regime. He was taken away in the yellow Mercedes and has not been seen since.

Another had been a teacher, whose apparent offence was to have a license to carry a gun issued by the Serbian authorities.

The inmate said he believed that more than 25 people were held there from March to June 1999, from the start of the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia until NATO forces moved into Kosovo.

The inmates were mostly from the city of Prizren and surrounding villages. The KLA had apprehended them after waves of Kosovars entered Kukes during the NATO bombing. At least one was arrested as far away as Durres, or Lushnja, in central Albania, according to both sources.

Our source, who was an inmate, recalls another inmate, a Kosovo Albanian, yelling from the barred windows to the troops in the yard, telling them that if they killed him, he had six brothers who would avenge him. “What would you do about them?” he challenged them.

According to the same two sources, and UNMIK documents from their investigation into the case, some of the survivors were transferred in the aftermath of the war to detention cells at the police station in Prizren, in Kosovo.

On June 18th, they, and other people detained by the KLA in Prizren, were released by German KFOR troops, who stormed the building.

The same sources estimated that as many as 18 captives may have been killed in Kukes.
The source who was a member of the KLA said: “I understand that they had cooperated with the Serbs and had done a lot of harm. This would make people mad when one thinks of the massacres happening across the border. But their treatment was brutal. At times, I was sorry for them.”

The former inmate we spoke to was sceptical about whether any of the captives had actively collaborated with Serbian death squads.

“But even if they deserved punishment, no-one had the right to do that [torture] to someone [else],” he said. “No-one has the right to do such things to other human beings.”


A NETWORK OF CAMPS

Kukes was an important strategic location for the KLA. Weapons, uniforms, cash and fresh recruits all flowed through the warehouses and storage buildings at the site.

The base was also important for the KLA military police, which reportedly rounded up suspects from among the mass of civilians who fled to Albania, or were expelled by Serbian forces.

A unit of the Albanian army, stationed at the base in Kukes, assisted the KLA to set up its military police operations, according to several policemen we interviewed.

It appears that Kukes was one of many detention centres in Albania and Kosovo, and prisoners would be transferred from one to another.

Two captives were brought to Kukes from a similar KLA facility near the town of Burrel, where the KLA ran a barracks for training soldiers during the last two months of the war, said the former inmate.

“They told us about people being killed there, people put into lime pits there,” he said. “I could also see what was going on in Burrel from the state [in which] they were brought in... They’d been tortured badly.”

According to the UN documents, the interviews with KLA members and the inmate, other captives were transferred to Kukes from KLA facilities in at least two other places - Durres, and after the war, Prizren in Kosovo itself.

The KLA had intelligence units and military police in most bases they maintained in Albania.

Halil Katana, a military journalist from Tirana, in his authorised biography of Kudusi Lama, the commander of the Kukes division, ‘Kudusi Lama: War General’, writes: “Those units [of the KLA military police] played an important role in establishing the discipline in KLA groups trained in the Kukes area, and in seizing Serb agents who entered the country amongst refugees from Kosovo.”

These units maintained detainment cells in Babine, a logistics centre near the border region of Tropoja; in the training camp of Burrel and at a KLA base in Durres, according to our third source, another member of the KLA.

Bislim Zyrapi, currently an official at the Interior Ministry of Kosovo, was responsible for the KLA operations at the base in Kukes from early May to the end of the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia on June 10th.

He says that the people detained at the jail in Kukes were soldiers with disciplinary problems, and that there were no people killed at the base, or outside of it. But he added that he found the KLA in disarray, with armed soldiers and individuals who wandered freely in town and elsewhere in Albania. “One of the first things I had to do was to discipline them,” he said.

PERPETRATORS AT LARGE

According to eyewitnesses, two Albanian citizens involved with the KLA took part in these interrogations.

One man, described as having long black hair, was especially brutal to the Roma from Prizren, according to one source.

One source said KLA fighters coming back from fighting in Kosovo sometimes took out their rage on the inmates.

The other said the prisoners were tortured into admitting they had cooperated with the Serbian state security forces, UDBA. The interrogators wanted to record the prisoners confessing collaboration with the Serbs.

The same sources that witnessed the base in Kukes, told us that the interrogators in Kukes were KLA officers who had been involved in the capture of suspected collaborators.
Both our sources concerning the base, identified several KLA officers involved in the abuses at Kukes.

One of them is currently in a top position in the judicial system in Kosovo.

We have withheld names of the alleged perpetrators, so as not to endanger our sources.

Some men involved in the abuses at Kukes were also involved in abducting Kosovo citizens after the war, according to former KLA soldiers we interviewed.

Their targets were not Albanian ‘traitors’, but Serbs or Roma who had remained in Kosovo after NATO troops entered the territory.

One Kosovo Albanian who returned to fight in Kosovo after spending many years abroad, told us he saw nearly 30 Serbs and Roma held in a KLA camp in Baballoq/Babaloc, near Decan in western Kosovo, after the war, in summer 1999.

He said he heard screams from the location and assumed the inmates were being tortured. When NATO patrols passed through the area, the prisoners were hidden in a workhouse, the same source added.

This former KLA fighter said he suspects the group was taken over the border to Albania and killed. “I never saw them again, never read anything about them in the newspaper,” he said. “So they probably disappeared into the mountains.”


Listen to Michael Montgormery on BBC

Read also:
Burrel: KLA Training Camp with Another Purpose?
The KLA: From Guerilla Wars to Party Plenums

Altin Raxhimi is a freelance journalist based in Tirana. Michael Montgomery is a special correspondent for the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, California. Vladimir Karaj is a reporter with ‘Korrieri’, a Tirana daily.

The research for this story was funded by the Alumni fund for the Balkan Fellowship for Journalism Excellence. Part of the funding was provided by SCOOP, a structure of the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism that helps fund investigative journalism in Eastern Europe.

© The full text of this article is the copyright of the Balkan Investigative Journalism Network, BIRN, and its authors. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form without the express permission of BIRN. Requests for syndication should be directed to ana@birn.eu.com

http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/18047/

Cancer: NATO’s time bomb in the Balkans

Cancer: NATO’s time bomb in the Balkans
24 March, 2009, 22:23

Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the three-month NATO bombing campaign of the former Yugoslavia - and a decade later, the wounds of the war are still felt.
Throughout the areas which have been affected by NATO bombings, hundreds of people are dying of cancer. Experts say that this may be a result of uranium shells being used.
A little cemetery in Bratunac, Eastern Bosnia became the final resting place for a number of cancer victims. A local resident, who preferred to remain anonymous, gave RT the names of some who are buried there. He says they all died of cancer.
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Djoko Zelenovic, who worked in the local military repair factory, died from the disease at the age of 65. The 35 year-old mother of two small children also rests here.
There used to be no more than one or two funerals a year in this small Serbian village in Eastern Bosnia. Since NATO dropped bombs on Sarajevo in the summer of 1995, the number has climbed to as many as one or two deaths a month.
Nikola Zelenovic’s parents are buried here. He says they were healthy until the NATO bombings and is now spearheading an investigation.Nikola says that "my family lived throughout the war years in the town of Hadjici. My father was working in one of the factories there when NATO bombed it. His health problems started soon afterwards. He died from lung cancer. My mother died a year and a half after him from Leukemia. My parents were never sick before."
Starting on March 24th, 1999, for three months NATO bombed Serb targets in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. Four years earlier its forces had bombed Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Their aim was to end the fighting between Serbs and Albanians who lived in the areas.
But they left a time bomb behind them. In the years that followed, hundreds of people living in the areas that were hit have died of cancerIn Kosovo, the number of cancer patients has grown three times over the last ten years, while in Bosnia-Herzegovina, already more than a thousand people have died from cancer.
Doctor Slavko Zdrale has treated several cancer patients over the past years and boldly advances theories on the subject: He told RT that “a few years ago we started noticing that there was as many as five times the number of people dying of different kinds of cancer as compared to the number of people who had been sick before the war.”
“We worked out that 90% of them came from areas NATO had bombed and from areas where ammunition with uranium was used. Nobody in the international community took much notice until Italian soldiers who were stationed in those areas started dying from cancer-related illnesses.”
In Pale, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the war crimes court is recording evidence of an increased number of cancer patients. The court says that the pieces of ammunition found in the bombed areas had a much higher level of radiation than is internationally allowed. Investigators are convinced that this radiation is the underlying cause of cancer.
Simo Tusevljak, the coordinator of the Research and documentation of war crimes, stated that “we believe that this was a deliberate attempt by NATO forces to kill as many people as possible. It was also a chance for the West to test new weapons.” .
“But there is nothing we can do," he added. "We cannot file any complaint against NATO because all those involved have diplomatic immunity. A NATO soldier can kill and never be prosecuted. But perhaps one day some senior officials from NATO who ordered the bombings will be prosecuted. I believe the order came from high up."
NATO hasn't commented on the claims and has dismissed Serbian and Italian investigations.There has been no other independent research conducted on the subject.
The little cemetery in Bratunac is already full. But locals fear the number of cancer victims will continue to grow for at least the next fifty years, or for as long as it takes for the air to clean.
Ten years after the NATO bombings, the alliance still has a lot to answer for. But no matter when those answers come (or whether they will come at all) they will be too late for the cancer victims.
http://www.russiatoday.ru/Top_News/2009-03-24/Cancer__NATO_s_time_bomb_in_the_Balkans.html

`Hushing up disappearances in Kosovo is betrayal`

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19 February, 2009, 08:55

Covering up the atrocities committed in Kosovo against the non-Albanian population is ultimately a betrayal of hopes of building a civilised society in Kosovo itself, believes independent filmmaker Ninoslav Randjelovic.

For the last decade Randjelovic has been producing films on the human rights of minorities living in Kosovo. His work has been shown all around the world.

RT: Where did the idea for your work come from?

NR: The essence of it has been an effort to document cases of severe human rights violation that was affecting and that has been affecting civilian population of Kosovo and Metohia particularly Serbian and the non-Albanian ethnic minority in Kosovo. To have it recorded as much as it can be recorded and brought to attention of whoever wants to see it.

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RT: You say that you are drawn to this work because were hearing reports that people had gone missing, but how in fact did this information even come through?

NR: Here in Belgrade I would learn about that only occasionally even though 1,300 people in such a short period of time had been kidnapped. Sometimes there were no photos of these people of course in the newspapers, sometimes names and nothing much more, or maybe a location where they were seen last time. In 1998 I went down there and tried to collect some information from the family members and that's how it all started – with the hope that if we bring to the world's attention what really is happening in these remote villages of Kosovo maybe the suffering of people will cease

RT: From the data that you collected what do you understand happened to these people? How did they go missing?

NR: Well, you know, lots of them had been just kidnapped outside. They were stopped at the road and then just abducted like that. But at that time it was like devastating for me even though I did record these facts, it seemed like nobody really cared about it. The lack of media attention to what was really going on in Kosovo is something that I think we can say made space for such terrible things to happen at the first place.

RT: Who did you understand kidnapped these 1,300 non-Albanians and why?

NR: According to the people I talked to, most likely paramilitary troops, KLA troops were the ones who were involved in this kidnapping process. But you know, the thing is, not a single person came back alive that we know of, so we can’t know that for sure.

RT: What did people suspect happened to them?

NR: We see that they have been killed Now there is legitimate concern that some of them were used to take organs from the body and killed later on.

RT: How lucrative a business is the trafficking of human organs and who's involved in it?

NR: Well now people say that – you know I don't know. But that's what I read that ahuman body is worth a million euros on the black market. If you have one body so to say worth a million euros, imagine 1,300 bodies or anything like that! And that brings another issue like I mean I'm not saying that is something that we will know, but at least we must ask ourselves and we must look into the lack of media coverage of these crimes and atrocities suffered by the civilian population of Kosovo is part of the reason why these things could have happened.

RT: Why was there such a lack of media coverage then?

NR: Because somehow politics in a certain way obscured certain issues such as these atrocities suffered by the Serbian civil population, because simply it was considered maybe politically incorrect to talk about sufferings that the Serbian and not the Albanian civil population experienced.

RT: Politically incorrect by whom, the Serbian authorities?

NR: Well, I guess not by the Serbian authorities but by the world media. But the thing is I'm more concerned – much more – by the lack of interest shown by the Serbian media.

RT: How do you explain that there was so little Serbian media interest?

NR: There's no ready explanation. I cannot explain that. But I think it's because the Milosevic regime wanted to show itself as in control of the region, as being powerful enough to protect Serbian interests in Kosovo that was jeopardised by, let's say, Albanian terrorists. Then, showing how ineffective Belgrade is in protecting people in Kosovo will undermine the message that he wanted to send. On the other hand, after the Milosevic regime was gone, the lack of interest in the problem – the suffering of the Serbian and non-Albanian population – continued. The lack of interest from the Serbian media is something that really makes it hard for me to come up with any kind of explanation.

RT: It's now 10 years later and obviously Milosevic is no longer on the scene, but from what you seem to suggest, the issue of human rights and non-Albanians in Kosovo still remains an issue and the media is still not interested in covering this. So how do you explain it?

NR: Well, actually, explanation is kind of a hard word. But the fact is we do still have such a serious issue as the lack of freedom in human rights. Basically it was again politically incorrect for the Belgrade regime to address that issue from that angle. Only two weeks ago we heard that an elderly couple a few kilometres from the border in Kosovo had been killed, and people are guessing whether it is because they didn't sell their house.

What about this tragedy from a human angle? From a human point of view? And how much do we really know about the fate of these people now? It is more important than ever now especially that the EULEX is coming to Kosovo. It is more important than ever to raise this issue of safety and who's going to do it? So, for example, with the help of Greece and Russia I hope that three of my films will soon be translated into 10 languages, six of which will be official UN languages, and in that sense this will be used to show how serious the issue of safety has been in Kosovo.

RT: These people are not safe from whom? The new Kosovo government? Or random acts of violence?

NR: Random acts of violence. Such numerous things. I mean lots of objects that have been destroyed and have not been rebuilt yet. People have not returned to their houses or rebuilt their houses. Hundreds of thousands of them!

RT: It's all very well. You're talking about Greece and Russia, but why is the Serbian government today not doing enough to assure their safety?

NR: It is a hard question for me to explain. For example, right now I'm in the process of trying to convince them after all these years. If the Serbian government is not pressing these particular issues, what will happen with people who still live there in Kosovo, non-Albanians, then who will?

RT: Are you surprised with what happened regarding Kosovo? That the Serbian government did not put up more of a fight to prevent Kosovo from declaring independence?

NR: I'm kind of surprised that the Serbian government has not developed this argument more. What matters to Serbia down in Kosovo are people. Ultimately it's not about history. It is not about identity. It is not about religion. It's about loyalty to a fellow human being. By betraying them – and betrayal is if you don't talk about someone who's dying and who's been killed and who's yours – we are actually losing ground in becoming a civilised society here in Serbia. We must ask about them. They must be the number one thing in the minds of our politicians. Because if they are not, then what else is? And that's why I think we’ve failed so far as a country to convince the world what it is really that we are fighting for, because we have not stood together for these people.

RT: Is this issue only about Kosovo or is it an international issue?

NR: The international community arrived in Kosovo to stop killings and to help create a multi-ethnic society that is civilised. That's how we will measure the success of this international mission – the implementation of all this money, weapons and political will. Is it going to result in a better life for an ordinary citizen of Kosovo?

RT: Thank you for talking to us on RT.

http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-02-19/_Hushing_up_disappearances_in_Kosovo_is_betrayal_.html

One year after independence, Kosovo needs 'a revolution'

Kosovo proclaimed independence on 17 February 2008 (Photo: Wikipedia)

ELITSA VUCHEVA

Today @ 06:59 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – One year after its declaration of independence, Kosovo has surprised observers by remaining stable but it has yet to tackle the profound reforms it needs to make it a viable state.

When it unilaterally seceded from Serbia on 17 February 2008, many voiced fears about the future of the young state and about possible outbursts of violence between Kosovo's Albanian majority and its minority Serb population, loyal to Belgrade.

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