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LETTERS OF SUPPORT

SERBIAN MASSACRES

 Updated at 12:20 PM on June 28, 1999

Kosova Rebels Feeling Defenseless (AP)

NIKO PRICE, Associated Press Writer

ISTOK, Kosova (AP) -- The rebel police chief in Istok hears the stories
from people coming down from mountain villages: Serb paramilitaries are
terrorizing ethnic Albanian villages.

But Naser Shatri, local head of the self-appointed rebel police, doesn't
know what to tell the villagers. Peacekeepers are disarming his men but
won't send their own troops to root out the Serbs.

For now, he has stored his heavy weapons under an agreement signed Monday by his Kosova Liberation Army and the NATO-led peacekeeping force, known as KFOR. But his frustration is growing, and his stash of weapons is quite a temptation.

``If KFOR doesn't protect this whole area, it's our duty to defend our
population,'' he said Friday in Istok, 35 miles west of the provincial
capital, Prishtina.

Throughout this northwestern corner of Kosova, gunfire and the crackle of
burning Serb houses can be heard across the dramatic forested mountains.
Even as they loot and burn houses on the main road, ethnic Albanians tell of Serb paramilitary holdouts in the hills, firing at refugees trying to go
home.

KLA fighter Arsim Qorri, 20, and his men have held onto their weapons and
are clashing daily with Serb paramilitary groups in the village of Baj, five
miles of dirt road above Istok.

``The Serbs are still armed, so we cannot be disarmed,'' he said. ``If KFOR comes, I will give up my arms -- but only if they take the Serbs' weapons as well.''

He said the villagers depend on fighters like him to take on the Serb
paramilitaries.

``They are shooting everyday and burning homes,'' he said. Asked who could protect the people there, he said: ``Only the KLA.''

Italian and Spanish peacekeepers patrol the main road in battle tanks. They have also been checking passers-by for weapons and escorting a convoy of hundreds of fleeing Serbs into the neighboring republic of Montenegro, but have done little more.

``We have roadblocks and checkpoints. We cannot go house to house,'' said Fabrizio Centofanti, spokesman for the Italian troops at their base in Peja.

``We are doing our best to defend both ethnic communities. And we cannot allow anyone to make his own law -- not the KLA and not the Serbs.''

But the villages down dirt roads in the mountainous northwest are out of
reach of the Italians, currently 2,300 soldiers covering roughly a fifth of
Kosova.

Even in areas with a strong NATO presence, attempts to bring security to the province have had limited success, with Albanians openly and
unapologetically taking revenge on Serbs for the ethnic killings this spring
and for years of oppression beforehand.

Thousands of Serbs continue to flow out of the Yugoslav province, seeking refuge in Serbia or Montenegro.

A half a mile down the road from Istok toward Suhogerlla, where Shatri said there was fighting this week, a lone Serb stood beside a French tank,
stationed as far in as the peacekeepers have gone. The man said ethnic
Albanians were doing the fighting, and that the Serbs there were afraid.

``Our soldiers and police have gone, and now it's not safe here,'' said
Voran Simic, 35. ``KFOR should come here and see who's doing the shooting -- Serb civilians or Albanian terrorists.'' Frustrations on both sides of the ethnic divide have the potential to become a major problem for KFOR. Only half of the expected force has arrived in Kosova and institutions like police and a Kosova army only exist as plans.

In the meantime, the rebels are under increasing pressure to take the job
even if it means breaking their agreement to dissolve as a military force.

Halit Ademi, 62, returned to Kosova from a refugee camp in Albania on
Wednesday, but still hasn't seen his home.

``They are shooting from the hills. My house is there but I can't go,'' he
said.

``When I heard about the peace deal, I thought I would be safe here. I
thought there would be more protection. Nobody is protecting me. Who will help us?''

Shatri, the police chief, hears the reports from Suhogerlla and the nearby
village of Corkolez. But he hasn't let his men take up their with guns --
yet.

``I feel very bad,'' he said. ``We signed the agreement to end the war, so we can do nothing.''

But his anger is building, and he said he has sat by long enough. ``If the
Serbs will be there again, the KLA will go there to fight,'' he said.

Bob Dole to Visit Prishtina for Independence Day (KCC)

Alb-Net has learned that former Senator Bob Dole will be in Prishtina on Fourth of July, the Independence Day.  He will also visit Gjakova, Peja and Prizren.  Sen. Dole first visited Prishtina a decade ago when Serbian authorities removed Kosova's autonomy.

Kosova graves to be exhumed (KP)

June 28, (Kosovapress)

Those who survived the late March slaughter on the banks of the river Drini I Bardhë (Belas River) that cuts through the fieldsin western Kosova say the river ran red for two hours after the serb police left.

On Sunday, British forensic experts prepared to exhume the bodies of more than 60 men buried along the grassy riverbank newt to the stone where they were reportedly shot on March 25.

Isuf Zhuniqi, 39, who was one of the five or six people who survived, told his story this way: "The serbs came and fouind us there", said Zhuniqi. "First separated men form others. They told us to take off our clothes and went through our pockets searching for money".

Afterward, they were told to put their clothes back on and line along the river bank.

As the men stood there, police held up a bullet they said they found in the pocket of a ten-age boy, said Valon Fetushi, 20, who lost four couisins and three friends in the shooting.

"The Serbs said they found the bullet in the boy’s pocket and asked if anyone among the men would testify that the boy did not have a sniper in his house", said Fetushi who was in Albania at the time and learned of the killings from relatives. "The boy’s uncle – the village doctor – stood up, and they were the first two killed". Zhuniqi, pulling away his shirt to reveal a small, round scar above his left shoulder blade, said he took next shot.

"I lay among the dead for 20 minutes and watched as they put the people in three diferent groups and shot them," he recalled. When he thought the Serbs had gone, Zhuniqi started making his way to the next village, and from there into Albania where he remained a refugee for three months. Zhuniqi said he spokes for two days to investigators from the international war crimes tribunal, providing detailed recolections of the massacre.

Armed Serb Paramlitaries face KFOR action

Brussels, June 28, (Kosovapress) As NATO monitored the demilitarization of the Kosova Liberation Army, the alliance's supreme military commander vowed that Serb paramilitaries who remained behind will also have to turn in their weapons or face KFOR action.

"In a number of locations, it's clear that Serb paramilitaries, some with connections with intelligence organizations and others, have remained behind," Gen. Wesley Clark said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"Whether this is some effort to report on situations there, whether it's the seeds for a future conflict to contest control of the province, no one knows.

"But it is a violation of the MTA for these groups to be there," Clark said, referring to the military-technical agreement governing the Yugoslav withdrawal from Kosova. "They're going to have to disarm and convert or they're going to have to leave."

The general said the KLA's demilitarization is set to begin Monday.

"They'll be putting their weapons into joint custody with KFOR forces, and I think this is a program that's timely," said Clark. "It's been well-handled thus far by KLA leadership, and we're hoping for full compliance with the undertaking they've made with NATO."

Vaclav Havel First Head of State from NATO to visit Kosova

Prizren June 28, (Kosovapress) The Czech President Vaclav Havel conducted Sunday a visit of four hours to Kosova, the first leader of a NATO member state to visit Kosova since the bombing of Serb targets began. During his quick visit, Havel found the time to salute German troops deployed in Prizren. "After what I have seen, the presence of German troops is very important for the population. Their contribution in maintaining security for Albanians is essential,"in commenting on his visit. "I was confident in the eventual success of the air strikes," noting that despite the great deprevations the Albanians of Kosova "are today about to return to their homes."

Report: Yugoslavs Linked To Crimes

London, June 28, (Kosovapress) Documents found in Kosova provide detailed evidence linking Yugoslav generals and police to massacres and a meticulous plan for the mass expulsion of ethnic Albanians, The Observer newspaper reported Sunday.

The hundreds of documents left behind by retreating Serb forces - who destroyed or removed many of their papers - provide sufficient evidence for war crimes investigators to ensnare the organizers of "Operation Horseshoe", the report said.

"Operation Horseshoe'' is the code name for Belgrade's plan to expel nearly 2 million ethnic Albanians from the Serb province. British officials estimate that at least 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed in atrocities. More than 850,000 others were driven from their homes and fled to neighboring areas of Kosova.

Although the report did not directly mention a link to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic - who has been indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands - it said the operation was "meticulously planned and ordered from Belgrade.''

The Observer quoted the head of the intelligence service of the Kosova Liberation Army, Kadri Veseli, as saying the discovered documents range from official minutes to lists carelessly scribbled in notebooks.

The documents, most of which are being held by the KLA's intelligence service, place army and police commanders in villages and towns before, during or after massacres, the report said.

The papers may also lead to the identification of a police commander who allegedly herded refugees next to a military command post in the village of Korisa as human shields, the report said.

NATO bombed the post on May 13, killing 87 refugees and injuring more than 100 in the biggest civilian losses of the campaign. One fragment of evidence is a notebook scrawled with the names of 10 Serb troops found in a half-ruined home in the village of Mala Krusa, where witnesses say Serbs gunned down 105 ethnic Albanian men and boys March 26.

On Friday, British soldiers in the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosova arrested a member of the Serbian Interior Ministry accused of involvement in 56 murders. NATO countries have already handed to the prosecutors at the International War Crimes Tribunal material on Operation Horseshoe, some gathered from refugees.

British Firms Aim To Rebuild Kosova

June 28, (Kosovapress) British business leaders are to travel to Kosova on a mission to assess the war damage and help decide how quickly UK firms can move in to restore power and water and rebuild homes.

Trade and Industry minister John Battle will lead the two-day visit, believed to be the first of its kind since the conflict ended. He said he hoped British companies would be among the first to start the huge task of helping the region return to normality.

Firms could be called on to repair infrastructure and buildings damaged by Nato as well as the Serbs, Mr Battle said. "Power lines know no boundaries. The top priority will be to restore power and water, and to rebuild homes for the returning refugees.

"Many UK companies have the expertise to deal with the huge task of addressing this human tragedy." Mr Battle said he was determined to bypass the red tape normally involved in placing contracts in war-ravaged regions.

"There is no point in waiting for contracts to be advertised in the official journal of the European Union in nine months' time. "I was determined to be quick off the mark and I hope UK firms will be able to start work within weeks rather than months, after we have been able to assess the damage over the next few days."

Business leaders from construction and power firms as well as surveyors and architects will accompany him on the fact-finding mission.

U.N. launches organised Kosova refugee return

Stankovic, June 28 (Kosovapress) The United Nations refugee agency began the organised return of the remaining hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees from Macedonia to Kosova early on Monday.

Refugees in the sprawling Stankovic camp near the border with Kosova crowded aboard U.N. buses for the ride back to their homes in and around the Kosova capital Prishtina.

But tens of thousands have already left on their own over the past two weeks since NATO troops entered Kosova under the teams of a peace agreement following air strikes aimed at ending Serbian ethnic cleansing of the province.

"We've seen 400,000 return on their own," said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Macedonia. "A lot of people in these camps don't have the resources to do that," he said of those taken home on Monday.

How the Serbs Burned Corpses at Balkan Rubber Factory (Newsday)

ATROCITIES IN KOSOVO / Evidence of Serbs' Ethnic Cleansing Machine
/ At least 10 times, smoke rose from shuttered factory

By Roy Gutman. WASHINGTON BUREAU; Staff Correspondent Matthew
McAllester, in Montenegro, contributed to this story.

Prizren, Kosova - Late one night at the end of March,
Shkelzen Kruezi, an ethnic Albanian in the Yugoslav army reserves,
climbed behind the wheel of a refrigerator truck at the cold-storage
plant in Prizren's industrial zone. The fully loaded truck had recently
been painted white with a large red cross on the roof to ward off NATO
bombs.
Although a full colonel in uniform, Kruezi was taking directions
from his civilian Serb passenger, Spiro Nikolic, who told him to drive
to Balkan Rubber, a factory 12 miles away in Suva Reka. There, Kruezi
said, he parked inside the factory compound and he and his passenger
left to rest. When they returned the next morning the truck was empty.
Gone was their cargo of frozen corpses, nearly all Albanians killed
in the ethnic-cleansing campaign by Yugoslav security forces. The forces
launched their mayhem March 20, and it accelerated when NATO's air war
began March 24.

After the truck left, a cloud of black smoke hung over the
shuttered factory. At least 10 times during the more than 11-week
conflict, smoke rose, said Fisnik Kryezic, 21, a Kosova Liberation Army
member who kept an eye on the otherwise inoperative plant from a nearby
hill.
"It was a terrible smell, the smell of rubber burning and also a
much sharper stench," said Sinan Bajraktari, whose house is next door to
the complex. "Smell that smell," a Serbian woman told a close relative
of Bajraktari. "These are Albanians we are burning."
Experts are investigating whether the factory was one of the sites
used to destroy the evidence of the Serb ethnic-cleansing machine that
the West alleges was organized by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic
who, with four close associates, was charged by the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague with murder,
deportation and other crimes against humanity.
Interviews with Serbs and Albanians, with officials and with
victims, paint a picture of a machine that had four main components: One
part was devoted to killing and robbing ethnic Albanian civilians in
significant numbers, a second to burning them, their homes and
businesses, a third to collecting the human remains and the last
assuring the final disposal.

Prizren, with its architectural treasures dating from the rule by
the Ottoman Turks, was largely spared the worst, but the Yugoslav
campaign utterly devastated the surrounding region. British officials
say at least 10,000 civilians were killed in all of Kosova, but that
estimate is likely to be low. Serb forces killed 5,000 people just in
the largely agricultural region surrounding Prizren, said one source,
and destroyed the homes and livelihoods of the vast majority of the
200,000 people who live there.
The orders to clear and destroy came from the federal interior
ministry and Yugoslav army general staff. The key orders were encoded
and signed "Cegra" from the ministry of interior affairs, and "Munija,"
from the army general staff. They went to police chief Milan Djurisic
and his deputy, Veljko Radenkovic, and to the military commander in this
region, Col. Bosidar Delic, said a source with inside knowledge. And
while the content of the orders is not known, their impact was felt.
Over the police radio during the height of the ethnic cleansing,
police chief Djurisic periodically barked out orders to go to a
specified location and "carry out your operations." Hundreds of police
and paramilitary units then moved into action, going door to door,
demanding identity documents, stealing cash and gold, executing people
in their beds and setting houses on fire. A few hours later, Djurisic
ended the mayhem with a similar military command: "Withdraw from your
position. Return to your base."

The greatest violence began March 25 when local paramilitary units,
commanded by two convicted murderers who had been released from prison,
Zlatan Zakic and Dejan Andzukovic, took to the streets. But the campaign
continued and by early April, a group of Russians took a leading part.
The Russians were briefly housed at a hotel, then moved to the Planinski
Dom, or mountaineers' home, a lodge on the top of Cvilen, the mountain
overlooking Prizren at about 4,000 feet and a 40-minute drive from the
city.
The group, under the command of a Russian army colonel nicknamed
"Noki," stayed as a unit until it departed June 12 in two buses after
staging a defiant thumb-to-the-nose photo in front of the German NATO
headquarters. A bodybuilder who sported sleeveless muscle shirts, Noki
commanded men with shaved heads or very short hair who often wore
Australian-style bush hats. They could be overheard on their
walkie-talkies, saying: "Albanians should be exterminated wherever they
are in the world," said an inside source.

The burning was done by specially trained police units, who would
enter houses with canisters strapped over their backs, spray a highly
flammable liquid, then ignite it from a distance with an incendiary
round or flamethrower. Collecting the remains was assigned to the
sanitation department in and around Prizren, mostly using the Roma
people, or Gypsies, who were regular employees, supplemented by Kruezi,
Nikolic and their white refrigerated truck.
When it appeared the war was going to be lost, army and police
commands ordered a final cleanup to destroy as much evidence as
possible. But this was far from the perfect crime, and investigators,
including the tribunal's Kevin Curtis, have begun examining thousands of
unmarked graves and unburied remains throughout Kosova. In Prizren's
main cemetery, there are about 100 shallow graves with markers
indicating only the date and "corpse number 68." Four unmarked graves in
an undeveloped section of the cemetery were added in the final nights of
the conflict. And in countless locations, frantic Serb authorities
created unmarked mass graves, often in a manner that ensured the
greatest insult to Muslim religious practice. They incinerated the
remains, buried corpses far from the village where they were executed,
mixed human with animal remains or dumped trash over the surface of the
grave.

Kruezi, 41, who was interviewed in Kukes, Albania, was a cog in the
machine. He said he delivered corpses at least a half-dozen times to
different locations and on three occasions brought them to area
industrial plants - twice to Balkan Rubber, and once to Famipa, a small
foundry in Prizren that produces silverware, knives and other products.
The movements of his 7-ton truck were helped by the security
establishment, starting with the Yugoslav army, whose wartime insignia,
a triangle with the letters VJ in it, marked the truck as special.
During much of the period he was driving, from March 20 to April 9,
Kruezi said the Yugoslav army closed off the Prizren cold-storage
facility. "They would say they had some loading to do," deputy plant
manager Ahmedan Krasniqi said.

Kruezi said he loaded corpses into the truck only once. It was on
March 24, when he and Nikolic picked up 32 frozen corpses at the Prizren
cold storage. All appeared to be Albanian civilians except for one
member of the federal interior ministry police. They drove about 500
yards to the Famipa foundry, but after waiting some minutes, continued
on to the Yugoslav Army's House of Culture, a recreation center in the
center of Prizren. Kruezi by mistake drove into the main entrance, but
was directed to the rear, where he and Nikolic left the truck.
"When we came back, it was empty," he said. "I don't know what
happened in the night."
They slept that day and late at night returned to pick up the truck
at the cold storage. Again they first traveled to Famipa before
proceeding, this time to Balkan. "I could not see how many bodies were
in it - whether one or 50," he said. But he said he had no doubt that
the cargo was human corpses.
On the evening of March 28, Kruezi and Nikolic drove to Suva Reka
along with a second, smaller civilian truck to collect the corpses of
the Berisha family, about 100 of whose members were slaughtered. The
deadly convoy had been headed to Prizren's city dump, when one of the
victims, a 30-year-old mother, Vjollca, believed dead, jumped off the
truck and disappeared into the night. This set off a panic, Kruezi said.
He radioed police, who told him to wait an hour to allow an excavator to
dig a hole, then to bring the bodies to Kroni Popit, on the outskirts of
Prizren.

But the location was on a military maneuver ground, and three days
later, the white truck was sent to pick up the same bodies again. A
Gypsy employed by the Prizren sanitation department, who asked not to be identified, said he was sent on the detail. Under the watch and
protection of the Yugoslav army, the excavator worked through the night
digging out the corpses, and when he temporarily had a problem, a
second excavator was brought in. The slapdash method yielded macabre
results, cutting bodies into sections and recovering legs, torsos and
hands. "We worked from 10 p.m. till dawn. It was dark and raining. We
were all covered with blood and smelled terrible," the Gypsy recalled.
"For days we could not eat with the family because the children could
not stand the smell." He and two colleagues said from that day, they
have been unable to sleep at night without a heavy dose of alcohol. Just
where the bodies were taken is unknown.
Despite the lengths to which Serb authorities went to collect the
remains of those killed, the cleanup was incomplete. Today the site
between Prizren and Suva Reka is a large hole with water at the bottom,
parts of clothes strewn about, and hair and other remnants of human
beings everywhere.

Kruezi's journey April 2 was in a different direction, to
Gjakova, 28 miles northwest of Prizren. It began late at night, but
this time, he and his partner stopped en route to pick up more corpses.
Once in the town, whose old quarter was severely damaged by Serb
security forces on March 25, they parked the truck in front of the Serb
Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity, across the street from the
temporary police station. "When we returned the next morning, it was
pointed in the opposite direction and was empty."
On April 4, Kruezi and Nikolic took their second cargo to Balkan.
Three days later, the truck went to the Famipa plant, where the gruesome cargo was emptied.
"I am sure there were bodies in the truck, but I do not know how
many," Kruezi said. A visit to the Famipa plant revealed at least one
large smelter with a wide opening that could be used for multiple
cremations, but it was not possible to inspect the inside of the oven.
The oven had last been fired at 800 degrees centigrade, somewhat below
the temperature used to cremate a human body.

Allegations that corpses were incinerated in factories are now being
examined by special forensic and crime-investigation teams provided by
major countries, including the United States, and directed by the war
crime tribunal. Beyond the two locations in this region, the Trepca
mines complex in Mitrovica has been frequently cited.
Unlike in Bosnia, where the discovery of mass graves, especially in
Srebrenica, has embarrassed and isolated the Yugoslav security
authorities, an enormous effort was put into destruction of evidence
throughout Kosova. For example, early in April, Gypsies said, they
received an order to go to Velika Krusa, the scene of one of the worst
massacres of the war, with well more than 100 dead. Under guard from the Yugoslav army, they dug out more than 30 bodies and loaded them into the bed of a Mercedes truck with a red cab. The truck was driven to the edge of the Drin River and the corpses in it were set on fire. Two months later, there was no sign of corpses, most likely because the river had risen in the spring flood high enough to tip the truck half over.

Security forces went sometimes to enormous lengths to remove the
bodies, according to witnesses. In the village of Burimi, near Malisevo,
about 45 miles northwest of Prizren, Serb police took the lead role.
After allegedly murdering 36 people in Burimi on March 31, police
ordered more than 500 civilians to walk to Orahovac, about 12 miles
away, and then a few days later ordered them to walk back, KLA regional
commander Ragip Begaj, 43, said. In what appeared to be a use of humans
as shields for the army, the villagers were followed by police in
armored vehicles and behind them, a row of trucks.
"I am convinced that they intended to come in and remove the
bodies," Begaj said. "But we ambushed them at the entrance to the
village."
A paramilitary soldier fighting with the "Arkanovci," a group
organized by Zeljko Raznjatovic, a Belgrade entrepreneur who has been
indicted for crimes against humanity, told Newsday that concealing the
evidence "became a big problem to the regime."
At the beginning of the conflict, "no one wanted to collect the
bodies, only the Gypsies. Afterwards the people doing that were the best
paid. As the end of the war approached the police and regular troops
received an order to clear up the mess." He said he had heard that
corpses were taken to the Trepca mining complex.

The body collection continued throughout the campaign. In
Gjakova on May 7, Serb police moved to the bridge between the old and
new towns and at random picked men 15 and older. They brought them to a house several hundred yards away and then executed them. Many had been
burned, but some had not. Two days later, the sanitation department
arrived with a tractor and cart to haul away the remains. Yet they
missed one body, and two weeks ago, just as NATO was about to take
charge over Kosova, Serb police and local people came to collect the
last body, according to Sebahate Hazizabazi, a woman in her late 60s.
An important part of the coverup was the removal of the very
instruments of removal.
According to Krasniqi, the cold-storage plant's deputy manager, the
white refrigerated truck left for Serbia two days before the arrival of
German NATO troops. Nikolic also departed for Serbia.
Kruezi arrived in Albania under a different name and fears that his
activities could earn him an indictment for war crimes.
"They mobilized me. They forced me to go into the army," he said.
"I must hide somewhere."

Volunteer Killers / Russians helped slaughter ethnic Albanians (Newsday)

By Roy Gutman

Prizren, Kosova - A few hours after German troops moved
into their headquarters here on June 13, two buses and a Mercedes
painted in camouflage brown stopped at the front gate of a former
factory administration building for a final gesture of defiance to NATO.
A tall, muscular Russian with a neatly trimmed beard got out and
posed for pictures with two comrades-in-arms, holding high their machine
guns, giving the Serbian three-fingered salute and shouting slogans in a
mixture of Russian, English and Serbian.
The Russians, who numbered about 60, had participated as volunteers
in the killing of hundreds of ethnic Albanians and the destruction of
towns and villages around Prizren, according to ethnic Albanians and a
source in the Serb security apparatus. In addition, ethnic Albanian
witnesses interviewed by Newsday said Russian volunteers had led Serbian
paramilitary units in wreaking havoc in other areas of Kosova, including
Gjakova in the west and Mitrovica in the north.

In the Tusus neighborhood of Prizren, Russians were the lead
paramilitary force in the assault that left 22 civilians dead last
month, according to residents.
In Gjakova, 30 miles north of Prizren, a Russian paramilitary
soldier led a group of eight local Serbs who wore masks when they
attacked the home of Dren Lohani, 13, on May 7, Dren said. The soldier
had no mark on his camouflage green T-shirt, Dren said, but his mother,
who speaks Russian, heard him speaking Russian. "Give me your
identification cards," the soldier said, addressing the women of the
household. "I only deal with the men." He herded the men into the
kitchen, then demanded all the gold in the household. "I heard shots. My
father, my uncle and my neighbor were killed," Dren said. He said the
same group returned two days later to collect the corpses of those
killed.
The German commander, alarmed by the surprise appearance of the
Russians, quickly ordered his dozen soldiers on hand to block the
entrance to the factory and demanded the visitors get back in their
buses and leave, a German officer recalled yesterday.

This was the departure of Russia's "volunteers" who had joined the
Kosova conflict on the side of the Yugoslav army. They organized late
last March in Moscow with great fanfare to oppose NATO's air strikes and
made their way to Serbia, where they were quickly integrated into the
apparatus that killed thousands and deported nearly 1 million ethnic
Albanians.
The volunteers were organized as a single unit and operated under
the aegis of the Special Purpose Police of the Federal Ministry of the
Interior, Newsday's sources said.
Indeed, the Russians departed Prizren as part of the federal police
convoy, one day ahead of the Yugoslav army.
Now that the North Atlantic alliance has agreed to accept 3,000
Russian troops, including 750 in the German-controlled Prizren sector,
military officers here seem to be anticipating the Russian army's
arrival with a mixture of dread and resignation.
The 60 or so Russian volunteers were military men either retired or
not in active service, and their commander, known by his nickname,
"Noki," was an army colonel, according to the source in the Serbian
security apparatus.

Russian troops to be deployed in southwest Kosova will be under a
different chain of command and discipline than the Russian volunteers,
but the regular army makes no secret of its affinity for the Serbs, who
are fellow Eastern Orthodox Slavs. "The euphoria from the greeting is
still there," Maj. Alexander Razumovsky told Reuters on Saturday,
referring to the hero's welcome local Serbs in Prishtina gave the
Russians when they arrived in the provincial capital and peremptorily
grabbed control of Prishtina airport. "It was so touching, and all our
soldiers and officers still feel this moral boost," he said, adding that
this was an occasion when "both the orders and the feelings of all
servicemen coincide."
One major problem faced by the various NATO armies is that,
according to U.S. officials, Western intelligence has provided little to
prepare NATO for the heavy political baggage the Russian forces will
carry with them when they get here.

For example, German commander Brig. Gen. Fritz von Korff told
reporters yesterday morning that he intends to station Russians in the
northern part of this sector in the region around Orahovac, a mostly
Albanian town with a sizable Serb minority. He asserted that he would
not hand over any town to complete Russian control, nor would he divide
any town into zones that could lead to a partition. "We will have to
think very carefully about where we put them," von Korff said late last
week. "I can only say one thing - I will certainly not deploy them in
Prizren." But Newsday has learned that Russian volunteers were in the
front line of the ethnic cleansing machine in at least five towns and
villages near Orahovac. German officers said they were unaware.
Among the villages where Russians were in the front line of killing
were Velika Krusa, Pirane, Samodraza, Korisa, Bela Crkva, Pusto Selo and
Drenovac, according to Newsday sources. Velika Krusa and Bela Crkva are
among the cities cited in the Hague Tribunals indictment of Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity. The State
Department, quoting refugee reports, said at least 100 men were executed in Velika Krusa, possibly many more civilians in Bela Crkva, and 70 in Pusto Selo.

The full story of the Russian volunteers in this region and Kosova
in general will not be known until they tell it themselves, possibly on
returning home, but the indications are they played a major role in the
ethnic cleansing. There is a tradition in Balkan armies of honoring
"volunteers" by inviting them to join the front line of fighters, and
the source within the security apparatus said the Russians played that
role.
The Kosova Liberation Army earlier this month claimed that 10,000
Russian officers and soldiers had joined the Serbs in the
ethnic-cleansing campaign here, but that number could not be
corroborated. The rebel force threatened not to disarm if Russians
returned to Kosova. But early yesterday, even as NATO appeared to have
reached a general understanding with Russia, the KLA agreed on a phased
demilitarization.
In theory, Russia's potential to go its own way will be constrained
by orders from the force to which it answers. Von Korff was unable to
explain the precise chain of command yesterday but said Bosnia, where
the Russian commander reports to the U.S. military sector commander,
will be the model.

Final Terror Spree / Peja Albanians saw worst of war - after the ceasefire (Newsday)

By Matthew McAllester

Peja, Kosova - Isa and Halise Bala thought they were safe
at last. A ceasefire was in place, thousands of Serbs were pulling out
of Peja and, after three months of terror, they felt sure they had
survived the butchery and burning that reigned in Kosova's third-largest
city throughout the war.
But the killing in Peja didn't stop at the ceasefire on Thursday,
June 10.
Instead, a long weekend of panic, burning and killing gripped Peja as
the Serbs left mayhem in their wake. That Saturday, Serb paramilitaries
burst into the Balas house and committed one final, incomprehensible act
of terror.
The Serb security forces' campaign to empty Peja of its majority
Albanian population and kill many of those who did not flee had started
in the first hours of NATO's air campaign on March 24 and continued with
a destructive determination throughout the war. But the burning of Peja's
homes, businesses and mosques abated toward the end of the war,
residents say, because there wasn't that much left to burn. Most of Peja
already had been seared by flame.

Then the Yugoslav military and political forces agreed to the terms
of a military withdrawal from Kosova on Wednesday, June 9. The initial
starbursts of fireworks set off in celebration by the remaining few
thousand Serb and Albanian residents of Peja were soon replaced by the
menacing glow of burning houses. Just when it seemed that the worst was
over, it got worse still. A final killing and burning spree had begun.
"In our neighborhood when the Serbs started leaving on Friday, they
started shooting and burning all the Albanian houses and shops that were
left," said Mihana Gorchy, an Albanian woman who lives near the train
station in Peja. "They set fire to about 30 houses in my neighborhood."
"You can see the results," said Vojislav Sekerez, 26, a Serb
resident of Peja. "It was panic on Friday, Saturday and Sunday."
In spite of the fresh flames in the night sky on Friday and Saturday
evening, Isa, Halise and their family were quietly relieved. Against the
odds and with the protection of their Serb neighbors they had remained
in Peja and remained alive.
As night fell on Saturday, with Peja's unreliable electricity out of
service, they prepared for bed.

A knock came on the front door. Isa, a 40-year-old butcher whose
shop was in the same neighborhood, Brezenik, as his second-floor
apartment, went down to open it. Three men in fatigues, carrying
automatic weapons, stood on the concrete paving stones outside the
house.
Isa recognized the leader as Nebojsa Minic, the second in command of
the Serb paramilitary group known as the Black Hand. Minic, a tall man
with cropped dark hair and tattoos of an ax, a snake and a knife on his
body, was known around town as a convicted thief and minor paramilitary
thug.
During the war, Minic styled himself as Mrtvi, the Serbian word for
death. That night, "Death" wore two crosses around his neck, one wooden, one gold.

He told Isa he had come to take all the Balas' money.
The paramilitaries sat the family down on the couches that still sit
in the living room, which is above a shop and faces the street. The wood
frames and synthetic covers of the sofas are now stained with blood.
Huddled there in a row were Isa and Halise, 38, with their children,
Hajri, 12, Dardanc, 11, Veton, 8, and Agom, 6. Bunched in were Musa,
Isa's 31-year-old brother, his wife, Viollca, 28, and their three
children, Rina, 7, Nita, 4, and Roni, 3. Only Isa's mother, Mahija,
60, was in another room. An invalid, she could not move from her room
down the hall. Besides, the paramilitaries seemed uninterested in her.
"I gave them 300 Deutschmarks, and they took all our jewelry," Isa
said. "But they took me to another house [of a neighbor, Ramu Gashi] and
told me I hadn't given them all my money and I'd better give it to them
or they'd kill my children.
"So I gave them all my money," Isa said. He was driven back to his
family while his brother was taken away somewhere.
"And then they took my brother's wife into another room and raped
her. My mother heard everything. But when my brother's wife came back
into the living room and we asked her what they had done to her she
said, `Nothing, they were just looking for gold jewelry.' "

At that point, everyone but Musa and his mother, Mahija, was in the
living room sitting on the long couches staring at the two men who stood
on the pine floor pointing automatic weapons at them.
The two paramilitaries asked a simple question: "Is everyone in the
family here?"
Apart from Musa, who was in the hands of the two paramilitaries'
comrades, and Mahija, they were.
The men opened fire on the Bala family as they sat there.
"I . . . grabbed one of my sons," Isa said, referring to Veton, "and
with my son I ran to the balcony and jumped out. When they saw me in the street they shot at me."
His wife, Halise, grabbed the nearest child, her niece Nita, and
stumbled into the back bedroom on the right, where Viollca had been
raped. Following her, one of the men pushed open the chestnut-stained
pine door and shot them both, leaving them for dead. Halise's blood is
still sprayed against the white wall. Amid the hail of bullets,
3-year-old Roni scrambled through to his grandmother's room and hid
behind her frame. Isa said he can only guess that the paramilitaries
didn't consider his mother worth killing.
At Gashi's house, Minic, the leader of this murderous gang, was
sitting with Gashi's family. He behaved almost mournfully, family
members said. During the evening he tried to seduce two of Gashi's
teenage daughters but didn't force himself on them. He drank coffee with
Gashi and seemed troubled by his fate now that the Serbs had decided to
pull out of Kosova.

As if following orders, he said he would try to avoid killing the
Gashi family. "It's hard times, it's really hard times, and I know I'm
going to be killed," Minic reportedly said. "But for tonight I'm going
to try to save your life."
At the end of the evening, he broke the news to the Gashi family:
"We are going now but I must tell you something: Isa and his family are
dead. I'm sorry it had to be that way but we had to kill them." He
never explained why.
And then they left.
Isa and his 8-year-old son Veton hid in a neighbor's house all
night. His wife, Halise, and their niece, Nita, too scared to make their
way across town at night to the hospital in spite of their terrible
wounds, stayed at another neighbor's, cleaning the bullet holes with
alcohol.
In the morning, friends took Halise and Nita to the almost abandoned
hospital, where a Serb Yugoslav army doctor named Jvica Marinkovic, who
has now fled to Serbia, did his best to save Nita's life. "They took
really good care of her," Halise said.
But Nita had lost too much blood. She died that morning. The Serb
doctor, Marinkovic, saved Halise, though. She is deeply grateful.
"I don't know how I survived," she said. "It is God's will."

Fear of lingering paramilitaries kept Isa away from the house where
three of his children, his sister-in-law and a niece lay dead. He had
crept back into the house on the night of the killings to close the
windows.
"I wanted to keep the flies away," he said.
On Monday morning, the day the first Italian peacekeepers arrived,
he and friends - including some Serbs - collected the bodies and took
them to a cemetery. He helped dig the graves for the six, including
Nita. A friend cut out six rectangles of sheet metal and with green
paint brushed on the names and dates of birth and death of each victim.
The friend hammered the nameplates onto wood grave markers.
On Thursday afternoon, another friend found the body of Isa's
brother Musa in another cemetery. His body had nine bullet holes and had
been mutilated with a knife.
Musa's son Roni and Isa's boy, Veton, are staying with friends.
Veton smiles easily at strangers but Roni cries in apparent terror when
unfamiliar faces appear before him. Roni is pale, and his dark eyes fill
with tears easily. His uncle Isa cuddles him on his lap, taking over
from where his brother Musa left off as Roni's father.

"I'm relieved," Isa said, standing in a Peja street an hour after
burying Musa and looking as busy as ever. "At least I found him. He
isn't alive but I would have tried to find him all my life long."
As often as he can, Isa, a rotund man who moves quickly around the
rubble-strewn streets of Peja, bicycles to the hospital to visit his
wife. She sits crosslegged on a blue-and-white checkered sheet that
isn't big enough for the foam mattress she sleeps on. She was shot three
times. White bandages around her elbows seep blood. Her blue T-shirt is
stained dark, too, and it becomes clear where that blood has come from
when, unasked, she raises her T-shirt to expose her large naked breasts.
A bullet passed through them, causing horrific flesh wounds and
bruising.
Halise is not as self-controlled as her husband when she speaks of
those few minutes in what was supposed to be the first days of peace in
Kosova.
"We didn't expect anything like this to happen," Halise said. "We
thought it was all over. We were just waiting for the Italians to come
and for it to be all right."

Neighbors, Then Killers / Kosovar Albanians recall deadly attacks by Serbs (Newsday)

By Michael Slackman

Magura, Kosova - It was not a stranger who burst into
Naile Vuniqi's home, slowly hacked off her son's leg, slashed her
husband's shoulder, then fatally shot the two in front of her eyes.
It was, she said, her neighbor, Slavisa Dukic.
"I saw Slavisa with a knife in his hand," Vuniqi, 56, recalled
yesterday, the memory of that early morning making her hands shake and
eyes tear. "He cut my son's leg off, slowly. They were screaming and
then there were shots."

Slavisa Dukic, roughly 38, had spent his life in this village, as
had his father, and grandfather before him. Every villager stopped on
the street yesterday, more than two dozen in all, knew the Dukic family.
The grandfather was a carpenter. The father was secretary of the local
mine. The mother a schoolteacher. And the son had been a driver at the
mine and an administrator in a neighboring village and carried a
reputation as a local tough, though not a killer. But in the end,
everyone said, he became the head of a paramilitary group that
terrorized, looted, burned homes and slaughtered the residents of the
village he had been born and raised in.
"Of course I recognized him," Vuniqi said. "He was my neighbor, I
have known him since he was little."

Officially, the Serbs had 40,000 troops in Kosova, comprising
the army and the special police forces. But the official numbers do not
include the paramilitary units, those soldiers who wore uniforms without
identifying patches on their shoulders. There were hundreds, even
thousands of these paramilitaries throughout Kosova, often committing
some of the worst atrocities of the war.
And in many cases, they were hometown boys who turned against
their neighbors.
"The majority of these paramilitaries came from Kosova, from
local communities," said Major Jan Joosten, a NATO spokesman based in
the capital city of Prishtina.

As required under the peace agreement, all of the official
forces have withdrawn from Kosova into the northern territory of Serbia.
And the paramilitary forces have fled. Theoretically, it is now time for
peace and rebuilding. President Bill Clinton has called for returning
Albanians to offer forgiveness and to forget about revenge. Yugoslavian
authorities and NATO officers are trying to convince Serbs not to leave
Kosova, or to return if they already have.
But for the Albanians this is deeply personal. In many cases
they were run out of their homes by neighbors who one day burst into
their home in military uniforms. It is this reality that promises to
undercut all efforts at creating a civil society in which Serbs and
Albanians are united in one purpose, to rebuild. While NATO is trying to
keep a lid on things, the countryside is dotted with plumes of black
smoke, from Serb homes torched by angry Albanians.

"His hands are full of blood," said Frank Sadi, as he watched a
Serbian neighbor's home go up in flames in the village of Lumi Imade on
Monday. "He burnt our houses. Why should he ever come back here?"
Bekim Asllan knows that anger, too. He has lived his entire
life in Mitrovica, a predominantly Albanian city with a sizable Serb
population. The two sides rarely mixed. But the people inevitably
developed the types of relationships that grow through the routine of
life.
That's how Asllan said he came to know Boban. He, too, was a
lifelong Mitrovica resident and he was a local tax inspector.
Then Boban became a paramilitary. One night, right after the
NATO bombing began, Boban showed up in Asllan's doorway with other
soldiers and set his house on fire. Asllan watched, helplessly, as this
familiar face burned his house to the ground.
Throughout Kosova similar stories are emerging. In one southern
village, it is said that a bus driver turned into a rampaging
paramilitary. In another, it was a hotel manager who is said to have
killed more than two dozen people.
In this village it was allegedly Slavisa, a person described by
residents as tall, well dressed and very handsome, with engaging blue
eyes. There is no way to talk to Slavisa, or even find him, since he
fled five days ago, disappearing sometime in the night. Neighbors said
they saw his parents leave around two o'clock one day, their small red
Yugo packed with everything they could carry. When they were gone,
Albanians stripped their house bare of everything, including the
windows.
"Before the war, he was an OK guy," said Jahir Dulla, 60, who lived
a few houses down from Slavisa in this typical Kosova village with
tile-roofed homes, dirt roads and a nearby mine where most people
worked. "But then he got power and that was it."
Neighbors said the slaughter of 25 local Albanians, including
Vuniqi's family, occurred on April 18. Vuniqi said she heard tanks that
day, then breathed a sigh of relief when they drove off. A few minutes
later there was gunfire and a knock at the door. Of about 30 armed men,
two walked in: Slavisa and another local man. She said they separated
the men from the women, and as the women fled, the men were slaughtered.
In the chaos of the moment, her 23-year-old daughter also was killed.
Today, Vuniqi is living with her surviving son in the house of
her brother, Nezir Bardhi. Her dead family members were buried by a
local farmer, side by side with the others killed that day. For some
reason, the Serbs returned two weeks ago, dug up the bodies, examined
each one, then reburied them. That was the ultimate injury, because now
she is not even certain that her loved ones are buried beneath the
proper markers.
"Never," she said through heavy tears. "Never again will we live
together. I can't believe the Serbs can do something like this."

In bizarre scene, ethnic Albanians reopen Grand Hotel bar (CNN)

PRISHTINA, Kosova (AP) -- The media circus in Kosova turned into a theater of the absurd Sunday, when Albanian-born Americans allied with the Kosova Liberation Army occupied the bar of the capital's main hotel and began serving drinks.

Many of the dozens of journalists and aid workers who have made the fetid Grand Hotel a base or a temporary home sidled up to the bar for a whisky or cognac, delighted that a rare bar had opened in this devastated capital.

The hotel's Serb managers were less than amused, and called in peacekeepers to seal off the hotel to anyone but guests and accredited journalists.

After much drinking and dancing in the hotel lobby, the KLA bartenders packed up at about 10 p.m. and British forces, trying hard to maintain a stiff upper lip, said negotiations would begin Tuesday to resolve the matter.

The new bar crew was apparently from a group of Americans of Albanian descent who came to Kosova several months ago to fight for the cause of the KLA, which wants independence for Kosova's ethnic Albanian majority from Yugoslavia.

While the scene was comic, it underscored a serious problem for the Serb minority of Kosova: Ethnic Albanian fighters see the entry of NATO peacekeepers as a victory, and are increasingly bold in reclaiming the province and launching revenge attacks on Serbs, many of whom are fleeing.

The Serb-run Grand Hotel, the only one operating in downtown Prishtina, has served as a major center for the hundreds of journalists who have come to Kosova to cover the entry of an international peacekeeping force after more than two months of NATO bombing.

With city services devastated, the hotel, too, has become a casualty of the war, with garbage rotting in the garage and elevators almost always out of order.

Saying they were intimidated by ethnic Albanians, many of the hotel's Serb workers have fled. Shortages led to the shutdown of the bar late last week.

When it reopened on Sunday, Serbs in red jumpsuits -- members of the Belgrade-based Center for Peace and Tolerance, which is trying to protect the interests of Serbs in Kosova -- were called in to try to negotiate. Talks will start in earnest Tuesday.

If the goal of the new bartenders was publicity, they chose the right place. Dozens of reporters, photographers and TV crews swarmed around the bar and the troops guarding the hotel.

By the end of the evening, the bar had nearly 100 revelers. At least one British soldier accepted a Coke -- on the house.

The KLA-allied youths, Kosova-Americans who said they were from the "Atlantic Brigade" of the rebels, said they were just providing a valuable service.

"We want you journalists to feel freedom and have service like back in the States," said bartender Issmet Nikqi, 27, of Brooklyn Heights, New York.

"(State Department spokesman) James Rubin can come and have a drink with us, and his wife of course -- what's her name?" he said, groping for the name of Christiane Amanpour, veteran correspondent for Cable News Network.

"We love her," he said.

Serbs Free 166 Albanians, Many Still Being Held in Serbian Prisons (NY Times)

By CARLOTTA GALL

LABJAN, Kosova -- Milazim Kelmendi walked through the gate of his house on Saturday and took his family completely by surprise. They had last seen him on May 7 when he and dozens of other men were taken away by the Serbian police, and were convinced that he was dead.

"I had had no news, whether he was dead, massacred, or what," his mother, Have Kelmendi, said Sunday. "I wasn't this happy even the day he was born."

His younger brother added, "We were crying all the time, thinking he was dead."

Pale and gaunt and with his head shaved, the 26-year-old Kelmendi had survived a month and a half in Serbian prisons, first in the Kosova town of Peja and then in Zajecar in Serbia.

"He looks like they have taken him out of the ground," his mother said.

Milazim Kelmendi was one of 166 prisoners, all men, released by Serbian authorities two days ago from two prisons in Serbia, in the towns of Leskovac and Zajecar. They had all been detained around May 7, when trying to flee to Albania with their families. The men had been separated from the women and children and marched away.

Their release, which came unexpectedly, has ended the anguish for some families and raised hopes for others still searching for their relatives. The Serbian prison authorities handed the men over to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The director of one of the prisons said the men were being released in a gesture of good will, said a Red Cross spokeswoman, Daloni Carlisle.

The release served as confirmation of the reports that Albanians were being held in Serbian prisons after being transferred from Kosova a few weeks ago. The 166, who all came from the Peja region, in western Kosova, are probably a small proportion of the total being held in Serbia, aid agencies believe and some of those released also say. And they are only a small fraction of the total number of Albanians who remain missing from the war.

Serbian officials have told the Red Cross that they have a list of 2,070 Kosovars in their prisons. The officials have yet to make a list public, and it is not clear how comprehensive it might be, but they have shown one to some relatives seeking news of missing men. They say the list is available to relatives, but many Albanians may be hesitant to approach Serbian officials to see it.

The tally of missing Albanians may end up far higher. As refugees are returning home to Kosova, the authorities and aid agencies are beginning to compile lists of missing people. Many are feared to be dead.

The situation is complicated since the return of prisoners is not covered in the United Nations Security Council resolution on Kosova or in the agreement signed by NATO and the Yugoslav Army that ended the war.

In the town of Gjakova and surrounding villages, in western Kosova, 1,500 local people already have been listed as missing. In southern Kosova, the German contingent of NATO forces has listed the names of 855 people reported missing in their area of operations. The German sector is one of five areas of control that NATO forces oversee.

Human rights organizations and members of the war crimes tribunal at The Hague say it is too early to estimate accurately how many people are missing or have been killed, but they say they fear that it will run to much more than a few thousand. "From driving around the province, my gut tells me it could be 10,000," said one investigator.

The prisons in Serbia are perhaps the source of the greatest hope for finding men alive. They not only hold men arrested in Kosova, but also Kosova Albanians arrested in Montenegro and in Serbia.

Nine Kosova Albanian students who had been in school in Belgrade are thought to be in prisons there. All were close to graduation and model students, said Natasa Kandic of the Center for Humanitarian Law, a respected human rights group based in Belgrade. They had been studying to become doctors, veterinarians, pharmacists and educators, and had stayed on in Belgrade after the war started, intent on completing their studies.

Five who had been arrested on May 2 were later shown on state television, along with an array of weapons. They were accused of being fighters for the rebel Kosova Liberation Army and of preparing some terrorist action for public places in the capital. The other four have not been heard of since their arrest, which was witnessed on May 13 by a fellow student. The police, prosecutors and prison authorities in Belgrade have said they have no records of the second group, Ms. Kandic said.

The prospects of finding people who were abducted or who disappeared during heavy fighting are even bleaker. Several people, both Serbs and Kosova Albanians, are thought to have been abducted or killed by members of the Kosova Albanian rebel group.

Ms. Carlisle, the Red Cross spokeswoman, said her agency has lists of about 140 people who disappeared during the first year of fighting in Kosova and another group of a similar number who disappeared in the last three months in the NATO assault and increased violence. Rebel leaders have told the Red Cross they are not holding anyone, but the organization is persisting in asking for details on the missing, she said.

The lack of any agreement on the return of prisoners complicates the work of organizations like the Red Cross to obtain the release of prisoners and will prolong the agony for many families, Ms. Carlisle said.

Families still searching for news say the most agonizing part is not knowing. Fehmi Kuci pined away after her husband was taken by Serbian forces in May. "She shrank so much that you could hold her in the palm of your hand," said her sister Fitore Kelmendi, 19, in another household in the town of Labjan.

When the prisoners returned Saturday, they did not bring Fehmi's husband, Izet, but they brought news that they had seen him and he was alive in a Serbian prison. "Yesterday she was flying when she found out he was alive," Fitore Kelmendi said.

Her mother, Xheva Kelmendi, said: "We thought they had been taken away and killed on a hill. We were so scared." As it was, Ms. Kelmendi returned to find her husband's body inside their charred house.