Kosovo Special Covg from INDEPENDENT, London


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INDEPENDENT (London) June 18

Liberation of Kosovo - Special Coverage

Ousted doctors return
By Emma Daly in Pristina

A rebellion hit Pristina hospital yesterday, when dozens of Albanian
doctors and nurses expelled by the Serbian authorities - some at gun-point
- returned to demand justice and their jobs back.

British troops ensured no blows were exchanged but it was clear the two
groups have different memories of the past few months and years - and even
of the moment when Nato began its bombing campaign.

"On the night of 25 March the director-general of the hospital and the
clinical director grabbed the doctors and nurses by their clothing and the
scruffs of their necks, and pushed them out of the hospital," said Dr
Zenel Kabashi. "Our own Serbian colleagues were armed with AK-47s . and
they told us that Albanians should all go home." Dr Muharrem Bajrami was
also on that shift: "The Serb military . told us to get out of the
hospital and go home 'Because you are Albanians'."

Under the Milosevic regime in Kosovo, Albanians were treated as
second-class patients, often made to pay for treatment and, they say,
mistreated by Serbian staff.

Now the Albanians want to return. Across the hospital lobby, the
opposition sat watching proceedings. "It is difficult to say anything; we
are confused and some people are upset - mostly Serbs, because we need
protection," said Zoran Soskic, a Serbian surgical trainee who has worked
here for five years since fleeing his home in Croatia. "I think it is very
difficult to create an atmosphere of friendship after all these events, so
we must find some other way to solve the problem. The other solution is to
split the clinic," he continued. "Or to split Kosovo," added his
colleague, with some venom.

                                    *

Mass graves found in defiant capital
By Kim Sengupta in Podujevo

The graves were new, hastily dug mounds of brown earth running into each
other, about 30 of them. They were on the edge of an old cemetery. But the
bodies lying in the fresh ones had not received any religious
sanctification. They were buried very early one morning by the Serbian
soldiers who had killed them.

The graveyard beside the railway line is just one of the grim discoveries
that war crimes investigators will make when they arrive at Podujevo. This
city, for so long the symbol of Kosovo Albanian resistance to the Serbs,
had paid a high price in human misery.

Early yesterday morning, British troops and tanks from Nato's K-For
entered the city to a tumultuous welcome, with roses being thrown at them,
as has become a norm in liberated areas. As the Yugoslav forces began
their grudging withdrawal from the blasted and burnt homes lining the
roads, the people of Podujevo emerged to tell of their experience of war,
of relations killed, injured or lost, of brutality and looting.

Veton Bekteshi yesterday afternoon led me to the cemetery, out in the
countryside in an area where there were still pockets of Yugoslav soldiers
huddled around in little groups.

There, under a sky of dark thunder clouds lit by flashes of lightning, two
local men, Zeqir Jusufi and Ahmet Vesil, talked about those killed and
buried there. "That one there is Idris Tahiri, and the one over there is
his son Selim," Mr Jusufi said. "People who saw the buryings pointed the
graves out to us. Selim and Idris were my next-door neighbours. The
Chetniks [Serbian forces] went into their homes and shot them. They were
good men. Idris was about 70, why would anyone want to kill an old man
like him?"

Mr Vesil said that most of the burials took place just over two months
ago, but there had been a few more recently. "The killings really began
after the Nato bombing started, the Serbs seemed to go mad. "I saw the
first lot of bodies being brought here one morning, when it was still
dark. Serbian soldiers brought them and buried them. I could not see
everything very clearly, I don't know whether they were all men, or women
and children too."

Amira Bashi believes that her husband, Ibrahim, and his brother Sadil are
among the those at the railway cemetery. But she is not sure; all she does
know in her mind is that they are dead.

"A Serbian soldier told me that, about a week after they were taken away,"
she said. Sitting on some steps off the main street of Podujevo, where she
had arrived to meet her cousin, Mrs Bashi described the last time she saw
Ibrahim and Sadil. It was as they were being led away from her home at a
village near Dyz.

"They came in four cars and asked for money. We gave them about 120
Deutschmark, but they wanted more. They started to beat up Sadil, and when
my husband tried to stop them they beat him up too. Then they took them
away. I was crying and so was my little daughter, she's only seven and she
was very scared."

Hugging her knees, staring at the ground, Mrs Bashi continued: "I went to
see the army and the police and at first they said they did not know
anything about Ibrahim and Sadil. Then I was told one day that they were
dead. I have heard they are at the cemetery beside the railway, but I
don't know." Her voice faded away.

Death never seems to have been very far away from Podujevo, and there are
still bodies lying out in the hills, the locals say.

"Some have been killed by the Serbs, but there are also natural deaths,
many of children, who couldn't cope with the lack of food. Their mothers
have sometimes simply left the bodies there, they were too tired," said
Vatan Bekteshi, who himself had been hiding in the hills for three months.

A former local official of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation
in Europe, he wants to start a record of abuses for human rights and war
crimes investigators.

Mr Bekteshi said: "There are plenty of graves of people murdered. The one
at the railway is just one of them. This area has been one of the worst
when it came to killings. The Kosovo Liberation Army has been active here,
so there has been a lot of fighting as well as murders by the Serbs."

In Podujevo, no family appears to be entirely unaffected by the violence.
In a monotone, an old woman recited a list: "Three of the Shalafa family,
10 of the Bogujevci, the Duriqis lost seven. "

Listening to her, Nezir Jaha described how he found the body of a stranger
in his house. Mr Jaha, a farmer, fled with his family from their home in
Obranq to the hills four months ago. He returned to check whether the
house was still standing on Thursday. "There was a body there, in almost a
sitting position, he had been carbonised. I couldn't make out if it was a
man or a woman. There was a horrible smell, it wasn't just a dead body.
They had slaughtered all the cattle as well."

As the Serbians prepared to withdraw there was a last burst of violence,
shootings and burnings, the locals say. Houses still smouldered around the
city even as Nato troops were taking over the streets.

Some of the victims appeared to have been shot gratuitously. Vehti Ahmeti
was shot by a sniper as he walked down the main street in Podujevo.

"It happened three days ago. I had left my wife and two sons at home and
come into the city to meet some people. I was shot not just once but
twice. One bullet hit me on the chest and then came out again through my
chest and the other one hit me on the chest, came out and then went
through my arm. It was about 4.30 in the afternoon and the streets were
very crowded. There were lots of children around and they could have been
killed," Mr Ahmeti said.

"I was taken to an UCK [Kosovo Liberation Army] centre by some people, and
that's what saved me," he added.

Syed Akhbari was at his home at Koliq when a group of Serbian soldiers
burst in five days ago. He said: "They wanted money, but I had none. They
started breaking things and then one of them beat me with his rifle butt.
One of the officers tried to stop the man. They all went out but then this
man came back again and shot me in the leg. I am very thankful that I am
alive. These are terrible times."

In his 86 years Selman Ismajli, too, has never seen "so much badness and
misery around". He said: "I have been through three wars, first when the
Germans came, then with the partisans and now this one. And this one is
the worst. Men became savages, I don't know what possessed them.

"I am an old man and I'll have to bury 18 people myself."

                                   *

Publisher dodged Serbs by hiding in 'homes of brave'
By Emma Daly in Pristina

Veton Surroi looks relaxed and healthy, if a little pale, for a man who
has spent the past three months in hiding from the Serbian security
forces.

Mr Surroi, publisher of the Albanian-language daily Koha Ditore, an
independent member of the Kosovar Albanian delegation to the Rambouillet
peace talks and seen by some as Kosovo's future leader, stayed in Pristina
throughout the Nato bombing campaign and Belgrade's expulsion of 800,000
people.

Sustained by the "extraordinary solidarity" of his hosts in four different
homes, he told The Independent yesterday at a British Embassy house in
Pristina, that there were three categories of people in Pristina.

"One was thinking vegetables, second was herded cattle, and third was
hunted animals."

The thinking vegetables, he explained, were people who sat in front of the
television, and then went to bed. The second were driven away like cattle,
and the third were people who were hunted and killed unable to protect
themselves.

"I fortunately escaped the second category, but I was stuck in between
being a thinking vegetable and a hunted animal."

His life was restricted to the four walls of whichever home he was sharing
- once with four families. "That was one of the lowest points. I had
become a danger for all the people there, and there were kids in that
house."

It was the closest Mr Surroi came to depression, but his house-mates
simply would not allow him to sink into despair - they never left him
alone.

News of the bombing campaign, "was like watching soccer. When we saw those
film pictures of bombs falling on tanks or garrisons, yeah! One-nil. And
these Apache helicopters - it was like a soap opera."

0utside life went on. "I saw rivers of people, incredible scenes of people
carrying plastic bags with bread, old people who could no longer walk
carried by their children, people afraid to look to the side."

One of those deported was his sister - but Mr Surroi's friends dialled her
mobile phone, heard a message from the Macedonian operator and realised
she was alive - then he saw her interviewed on the BBC. Every two weeks he
sent a message to his family (safe in Macedonia) that he was alive and
well.

Mr Surroi had a couple of lucky escapes while changing houses.

Once a special police patrol pulled up 20m away. "Three guys came towards
me - I thought my time had come. Suddenly out of nowhere came a utility
truck, probably looting stuff, and that diverted the policemen's
attention."

Mr Surroi is thinking of the future: re-opening Koha Ditore (the printing
plant was burnt down) and trying to build a new Kosovo, a civil society,
and a liberal democracy.

He does not admit to harbouring political ambitions, though he is often
talked about as the one Kosovar who can really do business with the West.
And his stock must have risen since spending the war in Pristina rather
than fleeing to safety. He has great hopes for the future: "This is the
end of the Ottoman Empire in a sense. This is one of the last transitions
from Communism to democracy. This is the European transition from
apartheid to democratic rule."

The Kosovo Liberation Army, he says, lit the "spark of revolution" that
caused these changes and now its leaders must change their role, so that
they "move forward to democracy and not the simple revolutionary gains of
power."

But for now he is enjoying a more normal life, telephoning all his friends
and savouring survival and a kind of victory. "There was a scene of the
Paras walking on their patrols, everyone 10m apart, and I said, well, this
is a safe place now."

                               *

Milosevic may be charged with genocide
By Stephen Castle in Brussels

PRESIDENT Slobodan Milosevic may face charges of genocide in the light of
new evidence of atrocities uncovered by Nato troops in Kosovo, the United
Nations war crimes prosecutor, Louise Arbour said yesterday.

The decision to review the existing indictment for war crimes has been
taken because of the scale of atrocities being uncovered in the province
during the past week.

Ms Arbour, the chief prosecutor at the International War Crimes Tribunal
in The Hague, made her announcement as Nato endorsed plans to help war
crimes investigators in their work in Kosovo. It said it would establish a
liaison team to tie together the work of the K-For peace implementation
force and the international war crimes negotiators. Speaking in Brussels
yesterday, Ms Arbour said: "We have never excluded the possibility of
framing the charges under the genocide convention.We always made it clear
that what was uncovered when granted access would be relevant. It is no
secret that what is being uncovered is of a very troubling order of
magnitude."

She added that more than 340 murder charges had been brought against Mr
Milosevic and his closest allies and that she "will examine whether it
would be appropriate to upgrade some of the existing charges and bring a
more serious charge against these and other accused".

The Serbian president already faces charges of committing crimes against
the laws and customs of war, and against humanity. The specific
indictments include accusations of causing murder, forced deportations and
persecution on political or racial grounds.

If Mr Milosevic is ever brought to trial for war crimes he would face life
in prison. Although the maximum penalty for genocide is the same,
upgrading the charge would be a big symbolic move since genocide is
regarded as the "crime of crimes". It is, however, harder to achieve a
conviction for this because the prosecutor would have to prove an "intent
to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious
group".

But Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, argued yesterday "the appalling
mass deportations we saw from Pristina, particularly the use of the
railways is evocative of what happened under Hitler and again under
Stalin. This was systematic brutality that was carefully co-ordinated and
planned with chilling inhumanity."

Four other senior members of the regime have been charged, Milan
Milutinovic, the Serb president, Nikola Sainovic, the Yugoslav deputy
prime minister, Dragoljub Ojdanic, chief of staff of the Yugoslav army and
Vlajko Stojiljkovic, the Serbian minister of internal affairs. Ms Arbour
said yesterday that she expects the war crimes regime in Kosovo to work
more quickly and effectively than the it has done in Bosnia.

As well as the British forensic team which has arrived in Kosovo, an
American contingent is due to arrive on Sunday, with help from France and
Canada pledged.

Investigators have been interviewing witnesses among refugees who fled
Kosovo but yesterday began the painstaking forensic work of investigating
the deaths of up to 10, 000 people.

The British government said it has information relating to more than 100
separate atrocities. The war crimes tribunal will not investigate every
incident but focus on those which would indicate a clear chain of command
linking crimes to the authorities in Belgrade.
 
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