[A-PAL] A-PAL Newsletter, No. 016

[kosova at jps.net]

Welcome to Albanian Prisoner Advocacy List -- Prisoner Pals Newsletter,
No. 016, March 27, 2000

This report highlights the developments on the prisoner issue for the week
of March 19, 2000.

==========================================
A-PAL STATEMENT:
==========================================
	How can I be free, when my souls are in prison.
		- D. Pllana, in Prishtina, Kosova

	Signed thru the online petition.  If you haven’t signed the petition
requesting attention to release the inhumanly detained Kosovar Political
Prisoners, please sign now:
	http://www.khao.org/appkosova/app_online.htm

==========================================
WEEK OF MARCH 19, 2000 TOPICS:
==========================================
* EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: Intervention of Bart STAES, M.E.P., on the occasion
of the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Convention-humanitarian law.
* ALICE MEAD: The story of Z.
* GUARDIAN UNLIMITED: Serb lawyers get ransom for freeing Albanians
* FREEB92 DAILY NEWS: UN official slams Kosovo mission, criticises Belgrade
* WASHINGTON POST: Darkness Still Haunts Kosovars
* AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE: UN official denuonces Belgrade's gag on media
* KOSOVAPRESS: Another four prisoners released
* KOSOVAPRESS: ICRC accompanies more prisoners from serbian jails
* KOSOVAPRESS: "Black Hand", the Serb terrorist organization kills Albanians
in Bujanoc
* AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE: Kosovar leader calls for the release of hostages
held in Serbia
* UN KOSOVO NEWS REPORTS: UN envoy assures Kosovars of support in finding
missing persons
* KOSOVAPRESS: It is released the prisoner Xhelil Mehana
* HUMANITARIAN LAW CENTER COMMUNIQUE: Natasa Kandic and Veton Suroi receive
another joimy award
* SRDJA POPOVIC: 41 activists of OTPOR arrested, 4 beaten in "Resist the
agression" campaign

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QUOTES OF THE WEEK:
==========================================
     Jiri Dienstbier, special United Nations human rapporteur on
ex-Yugoslavia, "We have UN Resolution 1244 saying that Kosovo is part of
Yugoslavia but nobody wants to confirm it and say that it is a solution and
that Kosovo remains part of Yugoslavia... On the other hand," he added,
"nobody wants to say that Kosovo will be independent". He described the
sentencing of Kosovo Albanian paediatrician humanitarian worker Flora
Brovina to twelve years in prison as "an absolutely made-up thing without
any proof". After visiting Albanian student Albin Kurti who was last week
sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment, he said that Kurti had been
convicted without any proof and in total violation of the Yugoslav legal
system. (Full article below)
	"We demand that the war criminals be arrested and convicted and their
hostages released, which would have an immediate effect on security," said
Mahmouti Bardyl, vice-president of Kosovo's Democratic Progress Party. (Full
article below)

==========================================
FULL REPORTS AND ARTICLES BEGIN HERE:
==========================================
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
Intervention of Bart STAES, M.E.P., on the occasion of the 50th anniversary
of the Geneva Convention-humanitarian law.

Session from Wednesday, 15th of March 2000.

	Mr. President, Dear Colleagues, Dear Members of the Commission, Mr.
President of the Council, I'm very happy for the presence of the Council in
this debate. I agree completely about the encouraging words of the President
of the Council just now. Nevertheless I would say, and maybe the President
of the Council is ignorant of the fact it's not the first time we are
talking about human rights and about international law in this Parliament,
that  we are debating on topical subjets every Thursday afternoon, but it is
sad to say the Council is absent frequently. That is very regrettable.
	Today I like to make use of the occasion to call your attention to the lot
of the Kosovarian prisoners in Serbian prisons, Mr. President of the
Council. The Parliament was calling the attention of the public opinion to
the lot of these prisoners three times, since our start in July, and the
Council was asked to act in this matter. The situation in Kosova is getting
worse substantially because the Albanians worry about the fate of their
compatriots in Serbian prisons. The madness in Serbia is growing up. Last
Monday the Albanian students' leader, Albin Kurti, was sentenced to fifteen
years' imprisonment, only because he organized
courses for first medical aid in the time of the bombardments. It should
be aid for the UCK! Crazy!
	Meanwhile people worry about the lot of the prisoners. There are messages
about torture. At the same time the repression against the Serbian
opposition by the regime of Milosevic is growing up. Mr. President of the
Council, I like to ask you once more to implement the resolutions, adopted
three times by this Parliament, and I like to ask you what you want to do in
this matter.

==========================================

ALICE MEAD
The story of Z.

March 22, 2000

	Z. has been in five prisons during the past 18 months. He was arrested in
September, 1998, and accused of being in LKCK, the party which supports
union with Albania. He was tortured in Gjilan police station with small
electric clubs and lost conscisouness three times. He signed a paper, but
couldn't read it due to the torture. He was told if he changed his
confession, he would be excecuted. He was tried in December, 1998, and
sentenced to 18 months.
	The worst day of his life was on April 30, 1999, when he and 42 other
prisoners were transfered from Gjilan to Dubrava by bus. Four times he saw
NATO bombs fall near the road. Dubrava used to be a military center, but
during the bombing it was used as a prison. Albanian prisoners were brought
there from all over Serbia and Kosova. It was on the NATO bombing list of
targets. He was severely tortured when he arrived there.
	There was a corridor of 30 guards who clubbed them. He got fifty wounds all
over his body. He was tortured so much that day that he can never forget it.
They said to them, "You are the ones who brought NATO."
	On May 19,  NATO bombed Dubrava. The prisoners took white paint and wrote
in the yard, "NATO HELP US." The second bombing was on May 21. Then the
guards staged a massacre. Z. was wounded in the head and neck by the
bombing. He was shot in the elbow during the massacre. Sometime he was put
in a truck with wounded prisoners and taken to Lipjan Prison.
	In Lipjan, a doctor cleaned his wounds once. After that he was tortured the
same as everyone else. They had very little to eat and hardly any water. He
became disassociated from the pain, the lack of food, the trauma from the
massacre, and so on. He doesn't remember all of his time there.
	Z. was taken by bus to Pozharevac, a prison in Milosevic's home town.
Conditions there were better. They got to walk outside each day and had a
chance to eat three times per day. They got one loaf of bread per person and
water. ICRC came in July and he sent a letter to his family.
	Twice HLC came to visit him and Natasa brought him a relief package. But in
October, 1999, he was taken to Sremska Mitrovica. The conditions there were
terrible. The cells were dirty. There were 44 people in his. They never went
out and had no newspapers and hardly any food. Only the packages from home
kept prisoners from starving there. It was very cold in the winter. ICRC
never came.
	Then one day he was his name on a list of releases. His 18 months was up.
Z. was released on March 17. ICRC brought him home to his village, where he
was reunited with his wife and three children.

==========================================

GUARDIAN UNLIMITED
Serb lawyers get ransom for freeing Albanians

Jonathan Steele in Pristina
March 23, 2000

Serbian lawyers are reaping exorbitant sums to arrange for the release of
Albanians from prisons in Serbia, in what appears to be a ransom racket
supported by the government of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic.
     Albanian families are making contact with the Serbian lawyers at a
makeshift "prisoners' bazaar", which is held on Saturdays on the open road
near one of Kosovo's borders with Serbia.
     The lawyers take the names of the Albanian detainees, most of whom
where hurriedly transferred to Serbia after the Kosovo war, in exchange for
a telephone number in Serbia that the families can later ring to find out
the price and an approximate release date.
     The money, which the families hand over at the bazaar during a
subsequent visit, far exceeds normal lawyers' fees: it is assumed that most
of the fees go to judges and other Belgrade nominees. In a system as
centralised as Serbia's, business on this scale must be pre-approved
by the ruling Socialist party, which Mr Milosevic heads.
     When the Yugoslav army and Serb police pulled out of Kosovo in June
after 78 days of Nato bombing, they took thousands of Albanians with them.
Most were being held for "terrorist" crimes. Their families call them
hostages, but if Mr Milosevic originally intended to use them as a
political bargaining chip, they now appear to be up for sale. Forty-two men
were released from Serb jails in the first week of March.
     "We collected DM105,000 [£33,000] to get seven men from our village
out," said suf Berisha, 37, outside the offices of the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Pristina this week. His brother, Idriz,
was in a group of 25 men who had been released from jail in Pozarevac, 40
miles south-east of Belgrade.
     When the ICRC vehicles arrived shortly afterwards, wives, mothers and
other family friends merged into a throng of hugs and kisses. They then set
off to their villages in a noisy cavalcade of honking cars and buses. Some
waved the Albanian flag, as though it were the end of a victorious football
match.
     Joy is rare in Kosovo now that the euphoria of the liberation from Serb
rule has faded, but the prisoners' homecoming provided a brief fillip.
     "Until midday yesterday, we didn't know we were going to be freed,"
Idriz said the next day. "We were taken from prison to the courthouse in
Pozarevac. The trial only took five minutes. We continued to deny we were
terrorists, but the judge gave us a 15-month sentence. As we had already
spent 18 months in detention, he then released us."
     suf interrupted his brother's story with a chuckle: "Actually, I was
the one who was a fighter in the Kosovo Liberation Army. Idriz never was."
     "We got out because of the money. If the money hadn't been paid, the
trial wouldn't have happened and we would still be in prison. Three other
men from the village haven't been released. They have already been
sentenced, and if their families could find the money they would probably be
released too," Idriz said.
     Further down Dejne's muddy main street, Samedin and Myhedin Bytyqi, two
brothers in their late 40s, were inspecting the damage caused to their home
while they were in prison.
     "I never expected it to be so bad," said Samedin, as he showed the
storehouse that the  family had converted into living quarters after their
house was burnt down. "Our main problem now is getting used to the   light,"
he said. "We were held in a dimly lit room all day and only had exercise for
15 minutes a week."
     The exact number of Albanian detainees in Serbia is unclear.
     The Serbian ministry of justice has published a list of almost 2,300
names and the ICRC has registered about 1,700 detainees. But Albanian human
rights groups in Pristina claim there may be secret prisons and the number
could be as high as 7,000.
     Nato has been accused of failing to insist on prisoner releases when it
negotiated the "military technical agreement" which led to the end of the
bombing.
     An unnamed Pentagon official was quoted recently as saying that
Washington had decided to drop any mention of prisoners because it knew the
alliance was desperate to stop the bombing. "It was a bare-bones document
that we were confident the Serbs would accept," he said.
     While the strategy may explain the omission to the west, in Kosovo it
is of little solace.
     "There is some realisation that this is not a statistical side bar - it
is an open wound in Albanian society," said Nic Sommer, the ICRC press
officer in Kosovo. "[But] a lot of trafficking is going on."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,149884,00.html

==========================================

FREEB92 DAILY NEWS
UN official slams Kosovo mission, criticises Belgrade

March 20, 2000

BELGRADE, March 20 (AFP) - The United Nations envoy for human rights in
Yugoslavia was sharply critical yesterday of the international community's
mission in Kosovo, describing it as having been a total failure so far. Jiri
Dienstbier told AFP that the main problem for the UN administration in the
province and international peacekeeping forces was that they had no clearly
defined aims.
     "We have UN Resolution 1244 saying that Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia
but nobody wants to confirm it and say that it is a solution and that Kosovo
remains part of Yugoslavia," said Dienstbier. "On the other hand," he added,
"nobody wants to say that Kosovo will be independent".
     Dienstbier also criticised the continuing influence of the Kosovo
Liberation Army, the presence of Albanian Mafia gangs, the lack of
sufficient international police and the UN mission's lack of money, adding
that international bodies in the province were working in impossible
conditions.
     The UN envoy also visited Albanian prisoners in Serbian jails during
his tour of Yugoslavia. He described the sentencing of Kosovo Albanian
paediatrician humanitarian worker Flora Brovina to twelve years in prison as
"an absolutely made-up thing without any proof". After visiting Albanian
student Albin Kurti who was last week sentenced to fifteen years'
imprisonment, he said that Kurti had been convicted without any proof and in
total violation of the Yugoslav legal system.
     Dienstbier also described Belgrade's closure of ten broadcasters in
Serbia as totally unacceptable and counterproductive, adding that any regime
which persecuted media was a closed regime which was condemned to
stagnation.
     The international Article 19 anti-censorship centre has also called on
world leaders to take urgent diplomatic measures to prevent new attacks on
independent media in Serbia. A statement from the center describes closures
and financial sanctions against publishers and broadcasters as a warning
signal that once the non-government media in Serbia had been hushed up the
authorities would settle scores with the rest of the pro-democracy forces in
the country.

http://www.freeb92.net/archive/e/

==========================================

WASHINGTON POST
Darkness Still Haunts Kosovars

By Danica Kirka
Associated Press Writer

March 24, 2000

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- Sevdie Ahmeti can stand everything but the darkness.
     It reminds the human rights activist of the war in Kosovo last year,
the decade of ethnic oppression before that - the years she simply waited in
the night to be beaten to death.
     Friday marked one year since NATO launched a 78-day bombing campaign to
end Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's violent crackdown on ethnic
Albanians like Ahmeti. For nearly nine months now the alliance and the
United Nations have been running the show, but basic services like power and
water have yet to be fixed.
     Slowly, ethnic Albanians are waking up to the fact that NATO and the
West are hardly all-purpose saviors: They can't even keep the lights on.
Worse still, ethnic Albanians say these outsiders are starting to blame them
for the province's lack of peace.
     After all they've been through, many Albanians see this as utterly
unfair.
     "We're good survivors," Ahmeti said. "As good survivors, we need to be
given a chance."
     Last week, the U.S. State Department sent spokesman James P. Rubin to
drive home the message to Kosovo's predominately ethnic Albanian population
that the world didn't act to save them to make it easy for them to exact
revenge on the Serbs.
     Thousands of Serbs have fled the province in the last year, unwilling
to risk their lives despite promises of NATO protection.
     Rubin's message made an impression, though not necessarily the one he
wished. Those working with the war's survivors warn that the West is
misjudging the depth of anger and frustration people here feel at the lack
of progress in bringing those responsible for war atrocities to justice.
     A system of justice has yet to be established in Kosovo to deal with
even common crime, never mind anything at all more complicated. U.N.
officials consider this one of their primary tasks, but plead for more time,
noting that judges, prosecutors - and even courtrooms – are not easy to
find.
     Human rights activists like Kosovare Kelmendi suggest the new plea for
responsibility is unrealistic in a place so accustomed to repression.
     "They are asking for Albanians to forgive. They are asking for
stability and peace and they are doing nothing about justice," she said. "It
is too much."
     Normal people are even more baffled, certain that they are once again
subject to forces beyond them. Take Ajnishahe Ademi, 45, a mother of three
from northern Kosovo who lives in the skeleton of an apartment building in
the capital, Pristina. Her windows are sheets of plastic. Most of Pristina
receives water sporadically: She gets almost none at all.
     Even so, she hopes one day to rebuild her home in the village of
Dumnica, 18 miles north of Pristina, yearning to go back to a life with
cows, fields and quiet nights.
     "I know miracles don't happen overnight but here everything is moving
so slowly," Ademi said. "We have shortages of electricity – of water. There
are no jobs. No aid. We are struggling with life."
     Even the top U.N. administrator for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner,
acknowledged Thursday that many in Kosovo were disappointed.
     "The people, they were looking for more," he said. "They were looking
for a fast solution. Was it possible? I don't know."
     Kouchner estimates it could take as long as 30 years to restore Kosovo
to civil society and normalcy.
     "This is very difficult to change the way the people behave," he said.
"It is very difficult to change, to build confidence, to change the spirit,
the behavior of the people - to open their hearts when they have to open
mass graves."
     Still, despite the troubles, people haven't totally forgotten the lives
they left behind.
     "It is true that this whole process is moving like a turtle," Ademi
said. "But again, it is 100 times better - and safer - than when the Serbs
were here."

© Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-rv/aponline/20000324/aponline133644_000.htm

==========================================

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
UN official denuonces Belgrade's gag on media

March 20, 2000

BELGRADE, March 20 (AFP) - The UN human rights investigator in Yugoslavia
has sharply denounced what he calls the persecution of the Yugoslav media
following a gag on 10 television stations including one shut down Friday
amid protests by thousands.
     Jiri Dienstbier, special United Nations human rapporteur on
ex-Yugoslavia, told AFP Sunday: "It is just totally unacceptable, it is
counter-productive.
     "Any regime which persecutes the media is a closed regime which is
condemned to stagnation, to backwardness."
     About 10,000 people staged a protest Saturday after authorities shut
down the TV and radio station in the opposition-controlled town of Kraljevo.
     The RTV studios and transmitter in central Serbia were the latest of 10
stations to be closed in two weeks as part of President Slobodan Milosevic's
crackdown on media outlets failing to follow the regime's line.
     Branding the closures a violation of Yugoslav law, Dienstbier said:
"There is de facto nothing to discuss, it just must stop."
     The UN officer also said he had also visited Kosovo Albanian activist
Flora Brovina in prison. Brovina received a 12-year jail sentence for
conspiracy to commit terrorist acts.
     Brovina, a feminist leader in Kosovo, was arrested last year during the
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and sentenced in December.
     "Her sentencing is an absolutely made-up thing, without any proof,"
Dienstbier claimed.
     Dienstbier also visited Kosovo student leader Albin Kurti in prison in
Pozarevac. Kurti was sentenced to 15 years last week for terrorism.
     The UN official said Kurti had been convicted without any proof "in
total violation of the Yugoslav legal system."
     Dienstbier also paid a hopsital visit in Belgrade to Kosovo lawyer
Husdnija Bitiqi and his wife, who were severely beaten and injured in their
Belgrade apartment last week by unidentified assailtants.
     Bitiqi received head injuries and doctors feared for his life.
Dienstbier said the couple were recovering.

Story from AFP   Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
http://www.clari.net/hot/wed/cp/Qyugo-rights.RFla_AMK.html

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KOSOVAPRESS
Another four prisoners released

March 21, 2000

Deçan, March 21 (Kosovapress) - From municipal Deçani are released four
prisoners from Serbia jails: Rasim Jahë Isufaj, Njazi Jahë Isufaj, Lanë Metë
Isufaj all from village Gllogjan. They were released on March 17th.
	From prison of Mitrovica e Sremit it was released and professor Xhafer Qyfa
from prejlepi of Deçani. He has explained about his kidnapping in Gjakova by
the serb police, for the tragic events, those from the prison in Dubrava and
then for the suffers at the prison in Mitrovica e Sremit which is full with
Albanian prisoners.

http://www.kosovapress.com/english/mars/21_3_2000_1.htm

==========================================

KOSOVAPRESS
ICRC accompanies more prisoners from serbian jails

March 22, 2000

Prishtinë, March 22 (Kosovapress) - Yesterday, the Red Cross of
International Community accompanied to Kosova seventeen persons who had been
released from prison by the authorities in Serbia. Twelve were released from
Pozharevac, four from Kraleva and one from Mitrovica e Sremit prison. Five
prisoners are from Mitrovica, seven are from Gllogovc, one from Deçan, one
from Gjakova, one from Klina and two from Prishtina. Also today three
prisoners were accompanied to Kosovo by ICRC, they had been released from
prison by the authorities in Serbia.
	Two were released from Krushevac and one from Pozharevac prison. One is
from Mitrovica, one from Ajvalia (Prishtina) and one from Gjakova.

http://www.kosovapress.com/english/mars/22_3_2000_3.htm

==========================================

KOSOVAPRESS
"Black Hand", the Serb terrorist organization kills Albanians in Bujanoc

March 22, 2000

Prishtinë, March 22 (Kosovapress) - The secret Serb terrorist organization
"Crna Ruka" (Black Hand) is operating openly in Eastern Kosova, reports
today the Kosovapress editor in Prishtina.
	The kidnapping and killing of two Albanians from Bujanoc last week is an
act of this Serb organization, say Albanians who have been driven out of
this region and are actually as refugees in Kosova.
	"The members of the Black Hand organization wear black uniforms and hold
knives and pistols with themselves. In the evening, while people stay in
their homes, the black uniformed men appear in the streets," say the
deportees from Eastern Kosova (Presheve, Bujanoc and Medvegje, with 75
percent Albanian population, administratively divided from Kosova after
1944.)
	In a people's gathering held on Monday in the biggest village of the
region, Ternoc, totally lived by Albanians, the political subjects called on
the Albanian population not to leave their territories, but maintain the
national substance in those areas.
	The Serbs have expelled from Eastern Kosova more than 30 000 Albanians
during 1999 and more than 8 000 others this year. In order to make
Albanians' return to their homes impossible, Serb forces have planted mines
in villages of Eastern Kosova.

==========================================

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Kosovar leader calls for the release of hostages held in Serbia

March 22, 2000

GENEVA, March 22 (AFP) - A Kosovar Albanian political leader called
Wednesday for the release of Albanian hostages held in Serbia, and for Serb
war criminals to be arrested.
     "We demand that the war criminals be arrested and convicted and their
hostages released, which would have an immediate effect on security," said
Mahmouti Bardyl, vice-president of Kosovo's Democratic Progress Party and
former political representative of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
     Only such a move would remove the link in Albanian minds between the
Serb community and crime, he told a news conference.
     The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) regularly visits
around 1500 people detained in Serbia and Montenegro.
     At the end of February, the ICRC asked authorities in Belgrade and
Pristina to provide information fate of 3,000 people listed as missing.
     Questioned about tensions in the troubled Presevo valley in southern
Serbia, Bardyl said that the exodus of ethnic Albanians from the area
towards Kosovo was because of Serbia's pursuit of ethnic cleansing.
     The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has condemned the displacement of
numerous Albanians from the region which is still home to 70,000 of them,
and where a new rebel group -- the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and
Bujanovac (UCPMB) -- has recently appeared.
     "As a political party, we are trying to give priority to a political
solution, to avoid falling into trap set by the regime of (Yugoslav
President Slobodan) Milosevic which looks for pretexts for intervention,"
Bardyl said.
     Belgrade was trying to destabilise Mitrovica and other regions of
Kosovo, he held.
     Questioned over contact with Albanian fighters in southern Serbia,
Bardyl said: "We have asked them to avoid all possible confrontation, but we
are also convinced that the Milosevic regime will try to achieve its aims,
with or without pretexts."
     Bardyl said his party was "categorically resolved" to push all the way
to independence and permanent separation from the Serbian state.
     He said his organisation, which was born out of the dismantling of the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), had 200,000 members.
     The accusations made against the former KLA leaders that they were
encouraging violence were unsustainable, Bardyl added, maintianing that his
party had tried to promote inter-ethnic peace but that it did not always get
its message across.

Story from AFP  Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
http://www.clari.net/hot/wed/bc/Qyugo-kosovo.Rp-H_AMM.html

==========================================

UN KOSOVO NEWS REPORTS
UN envoy assures Kosovars of support in finding missing persons

March 24, 2000

MARCH 24 -- The head of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo
(UNMIK), Dr. Bernard Kouchner, has assured Kosovars that he would arrange
audiences for them with European leaders to exert pressure to find missing
family members.
	"I understand the suffering and anxiety of the family members. Even if we
get bad news, we need to know. I'll do my utmost to help find them," said
Dr. Kouchner on Wednesday during a visit to Djakova, a small town in
southwest Kosovo where he met with members of the Municipal Council and the
Missing Persons Association. Approximately 1,000 to 1,500 people from
Djakova are still missing since the war began a year ago.
	Dr. Kouchner said he was disappointed that so many human rights reporters
had not made the cause of missing persons a priority. However, he told the
families that during his recent visit to New York he had asked UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan to appoint a human rights special
representative to investigate what has happened to those still unaccounted
for.

"I gave a list of the missing people of Djakova to the Security Council," he
reassured the families.

http://www.un.org/peace/kosovo/news/kosovo2.htm#Anchor86

==========================================

KOSOVAPRESS
It is released the prisoner Xhelil Mehana

March 25, 2000

Podujevë, March 25 (Kosovapress) - The prisoner Xhelil Mehana from
Podujeva,it is released from the prison of Prokuple. He was sentenced on 10
years prison, but his fine was reduced to ten month prison. He was the
member of UÇK, but at the moment when he was captured he was without
uniform, actualy he was arrested by Serb forces before the end of NATO
bombarding.

==========================================

HUMANITARIAN LAW CENTER COMMUNIQUE
Natasa Kandic and Veton Suroi receive another joimy award

March 24, 2000

	Natasa Kandic, Executive Director of the Humanitarian Law Center, a
Belgrade-based human rights and humanitarian law organization, and Veton
Suroi, founder and editor-in-chief of the Kosovo Albanian-language Koha
Ditore daily, are the recipients of this year’s award of the US National
Endowment for Democracy. The award, given in recognition of their commitment
to the development of democracy, will be presented to them at a ceremony on
Capitol Hill, Washington, on 3 May. Laureates of the award include Vesna
Pesic (1993), Martin Lee (1997) and Vaj Jingsheng (1998).
	The National Endowment for Democracy award is the second given jointly to
Ms Kandic and Mr Suroi.  They received this year’s Geuzen Medal at The Hague
earlier this month.

==========================================

SRDJA POPOVIC
41 activists of OTPOR arrested, 4 beaten in "Resist the agression" campaign

March 24, 2000

	41 activists of OTPOR form Kragujevac, Ruma, Smederavska Palanka, Zrenjanin
and Sombor were arrested during OTPOR action "Resist to the agression!".
Action was performed in 67 towns in serbia, on the march of 24th -
anniversary of NATO air strikes against Jugoslavia. During the action more
than 60 000 posters with "resist to the agression" message were distribuited
in those towns. Message of action was clear - youth of Serbia is against ANY
KIND OF AGRESSION, both bombing of NATO, and Serbian regime's agression
against students, media and Serbian citizens.
	Angry because of disaster of their own celebration of anniversary (which
was performed by the regime representatives in Serbian cities), cause they
wasnt able to motivate more than 3000 people, regime turned against OTPOR
activists once again.
	4 activists were badly beaten in Kragujevac, and 14 more arrested (and
released) when they tried to distribuit  OTPOR leaflets at local SPS/JUL
celebration. They are injured, and in hospitalized in Kragujevac clinic
center this afternoon. OTPOR activists form Kragujevac reported at 16,oo pm
that police squads are serching for OTPOR leaders through the city,
disturbing their parrents and friends.

==========================================

Additional updates of the Kosovar political prisoners, including those
sentenced, missing and released, may be found at:
http://www.khao.org/appkosova/appkosova-database.htm
http://www.khao.org/appkosova/appkosova-report0037.htm
http://www.khao.org/appkosova/appkosova-report0038.htm
http://www.khao.org/appkosova/appkosova-report0041.htm

Very useful statistics and update from ICRC on missing persons from Kosova
can be found at:
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/480fa8736b88bbc3c12564f6004c8ad5/60c532db
df49f6878525688f006f80d4?OpenDocument

Archives of the A-PAL Newsletters may be found at:
http://www.khao.org/appkosova.htm

Albanian Prisoner Advocacy List -- Prisoner Pals Newsletter, No. 016