[A-PAL] oct. 13, 2000 a-pal newsletter

[Alice Mead]

A-PAL: KOSOVA PRISONER ADVOCACY ---OCTOBER 13, 2000

WE URGE OUR READERS TO KEEP UP THE STRONG PUBLIC PRESSURE ON PRESIDENT
KOSTUNICA TO PROVE THAT HIS CLAIM TO CREATE A LAWFUL AND DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY
IN SERBIA IS MEANINGFUL--HE HAS NO EMAIL ADDRESS, NOR IS THERE CURRENTLY A
SERB MINISTER OF JUSTICE TO WRITE TO. BUT YOU CAN WRITE TO:

Javier Solana                    Tony Blair: gbrun at undp.org
Council Secretariat              OSCE Secretariat: info at osce.org
Rue de la Loi 1715               Jaques Chirac-fraun at undp.org
Brussels B1048                   Madeleine Albright-secretary at state.gov
Belgium                          US Senate For. Affairs--Sen. Wellstone,
Lugar,
                                 Helms, Biden, Lieberman

____________________________________________________________


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE--HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

SERBIA/E.U.: HUMAN RIGHTS AGENDA FOR THE NEW YUGOSLAVIA

(New York, October 12, 2000)—European leaders who will meet Serbia's new
president Vojislav Kostunica this weekend should send the message that
human rights must be at the top of his agenda, said Human Rights Watch
today. The European Union Council, which  meets on Friday in Biarritz,
has invited Mr. Kostunica to attend their session.

"This is an important time for European leaders to discuss with
President Kostunica a fresh vision for human rights and democracy in the
new Yugoslavia," said Rachel Denber, Acting Director of Human Rights
Watch's Europe and Central Asia. "Key issues range from transferring
indicted war criminals to the Hague to re-establishing the independence
of the judiciary. They are critical to restoring the rule of law to a
country that for so many years languished under authoritarianism."

Monday the E.U. dropped most sanctions against the former Yugoslavia.
These sanctions were imposed in 1998 and 1999 to punish the Milosevic
government for war crimes in Kosovo.

"The E.U. is of course keen to see Yugoslavia reintegrated into European
institutions," said
Denber, "But part of re-integration is that the new government in
Belgrade—when it's formed—will eventually have to cooperate with the war
crimes tribunal in the Hague. It's an indispensable part of the rule of
law package for Europe."

 Ms. Denber listed some of the most important
human rights issues on the horizon as including:

  the release of political prisoners;

  reinstating judges, university professors, and others who were fired
for political reasons;

  restoring the independence of the judiciary,

and bringing to justice
police and security officials responsible for serious abuses during the
Milosevic era.

Serbian human rights groups estimate that some 850 Kosovo Albanians who
were arrested during last year's NATO war are currently serving prison
sentences in Serbia.

Most sentences resulted from unfair trials lacking evidence against the
accused. [See Human Rights Watch's October 10 press release, at
www.hrw.org/press/2000/10/yugo1010.htm] Today a Serbian court will
re-hear the cases of several of these prisoners, including Flora
Brovina, chair of the League of Albanian Women in Kosovo. Brovina, a
poet and physician,  was sentenced in November 1999 by a district court
in Nis to twelve years in prison on absurd charges of conspiracy to
commit "hostile
activity" and terrorism.

President Kostunica is opposed to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague
and has said he does not intend to hand over former president Slobodan
Milosevic. Denber said that the E.U. should make clear that
non-cooperation with the tribunal is unacceptable, and that cooperation
would be a condition for certain loans and credits. "The E.U. and other
institutions should treat Yugoslavia's cooperation with the tribunal on
the same terms that it treated Croatia and Bosnia," she said. Last year
the E.U. governments postponed a decision about a consultative task
force on contractual relations with Croatia due to limited cooperation
with the tribunal.

For further information, please contact:
Rachel Denber (New York): +212-216-1266
Bogdan Ivanisevic (Belgrade): +381-63-832-9032

_______________________________________________________________________
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,381871,00.html

New hope for Kosovans in Serb jails

Rory Carroll in Pozarevac and Ewen MacAskill
Friday October 13, 2000

Sixteen months after being spirited out of Kosovo, Serbia's forgotten
prisoners are counting on revolution to end their daily round of torture
and corruption.
     Jails are softening their regimes as pressure piles on the new
Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, to release the hundreds of
jailed ethnic Albanians.
     However, Mr Kostunica wants to link their fate to the question of
missing Serbs. He has indicated a pardon would be possible only after
more than 1,000 Serbs who disappeared in Kosovo are accounted for.
     About 2,000 ethnic Albanians, arrested in Kosovo in the runup to
last year's war, were transferred to jails in Serbia as the Nato bombing
began. Lists are incomplete but the estimates of those still being held
range from 600 to 900.
     Little has been heard of the prisoners since they vanished into
jails in the cities of Nis, Sremska Mitrovice and Pozarevac.
     In Pozarevac, the Milosevic family's home town, claims of beatings
and killings have been made.
     Guards allegedly formed two lines to greet the arrivals with a game
of "hot rabbit". One by one the Albanians were ordered to run through
the lines while fists, boots and sticks rained down.
     Some of the prisoners, aged 14 to over 70, were wounded during
their journey from Kosovo. "And do you know what?" said one prison
source. "Not one of them made a sound. They didn't scream or beg for
mercy.
     "The beatings were savage but the longer it went on, the more the
guards came to respect them. They had dignity and were tougher than Serb
prisoners," the source said.
     A former prisoner told the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre
that between seven and nine inmates were bludgeoned to death with
chains. There has been no independent confirmation.
     "Serbian prison guards tend to be badly educated and don't know
much about human rights," said Gradimir Nalic, a lawyer who has defended
some of the ethnic Albanians.
     Mr Nalic said a mafia-type extortion racket offered freedom to
those who could afford to bribe judges, prosecutors and guards. "Those
left behind were the poorest."
     Another lawyer, Husnija Bitic, a Kosovo Albanian who has
represented many of those in prison, cuts an incongruous figure. For the
most part, he looks like any other lawyer, dressed in a grey pinstripe
suit. The oddity is his baseball cap.
     He has good reason to wear the cap: a 7cm hole in his skull, the
result of a beating by masked men who burst into his home in Belgrade on
March 16. He had faced a series of death threats for working with the
prisoners.
     Mr Bitic listed lots of cases of people being held without any
evidence and of people being sentenced without the prosecution even
putting up cases. He has not worked since the beating.
     At one stage he represented Flora Brovina, one of the best-known
Kosovan prisoners whose retrial was postponed yesterday until November
16. She is accused of assisting the Kosovo Liberation Army by supplying
medicine, treating wounded fighters and helping to supply them with
uniforms. Although her 12-year sentence was quashed on appeal, a retrial
was then ordered. There is increasing speculation that she may be
released.
     Mr Bitic was particularly upset about the fate of another client,
Ukshin Hoti, the leader of one of the Kosovan parties. He was allegedly
released in May last year without Mr Bitic's knowledge and has not been
seen since.
     Paul Miller, based in Skopje as a field researcher for the human
rights group Amnesty International, said: "Our first challenge to
Kostunica to prove his commitment to the rule of law is to release
prisoners of conscience such as Flora Brovina."
     Apart from a group of 144 mostly students and middle- class
professionals from the Kosovo town of Djakovica, the prisoners tend to
be farmers or labourers.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000
>----------------------------------------------------------
KOMITETI SHQIPTAR I HELSINKIT
ALBANIAN HELSINKI COMMITTEE
RR.  Sami Frashëri, Pall. 20/1, Hyrja B, Ap. 21, Tirana - ALBANIA
Tel-Fax: ++ 355 42 336 71/40891      e-mail: helsinki at ngo.org.al

RELEASE ALBANIANS WHO ARE KEPT IN SERBIAN PRISONS

The broad international opinion has welcomed the last changes in Serbia
which led to Milosevic's removal from the position of the President of
Yugoslavia.  Milosevic is the root of many upsetting events within the
Former Federation of Yugoslavia.  He is the representative of the typical
Serbian chauvinism which has been the source of severe crisis especially in
the Balkans.

However the changes in Belgrade will be appreciated if the brutal repressive
system which Milosevic and his group has left behind will be denounced and
strongly combated.  Righteously enough, concrete steps are required in this
direction.  One of the factors which show the readiness of the new
leadership to open a new page and put Yugoslavia on the pathway to democracy
is the respect of human rights.  One of the first requirements in this field
is the release of the political prisoners.  Among them there are thousands
of Albanians sentenced in the framework of the repressive campaign which has
been enforced for years now in  Kosova.

The AHC supports their request for their immediate release.  We greet the
initiatives which have been undertaken by several official and social
circles within Yugoslavia and abroad.  The AHC greets especially the open
and common letter of International Helsinki Federation and the Serbian
Helsinki Committee which has been sent to the new Yugoslavian president Mr.
Kostunica where among other requests was the release of the Albanian
prisoners who are victims of the Serbian regime.  The American organization
of the human rights "Human Rights Watch" has strongly supported this
initiative as well.

The AHC addresses the appeal to the international community so that they
make this request among the first ones to the Yugoslavian leadership.  A
quick reaction to the release of the Albanian prisoners is expected from the
community of all human rights organizations in Europe.

__________________________________________

Postponement of Brovina trial – obstruction of process

12 October 2000
The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) strongly protests against the unjustified
postponement of the new trial of Dr Flora Brovina and her continuing
detention. The trial was scheduled to open today.  However, Judge Marina
Milanovic who presides the panel, and Dragoljub Zdravkovic, a member of the
panel, both from Kosovo, failed to appear in court. Counsel for the defense
requested their recusal because of bias and obstruction of process.

Judge Saveljic, who is not assigned to the case, informed the defense and
prosecution that the trial had been put off until 16 November because of the
alleged illness of Judge Marina Milanovic.  On 10 October, however, he told
the HLC that Judge Milanovic had taken “a few days leave to redecorate her
apartment, but the trial will be held as scheduled.” No explanation was
given for the absence of Judge Zdravkovic.

Defense counsel Rajko Danilovic accused Prosecutor Miodrag Surla of bias and
said he had brought the same indictment in spite of the Serbian Supreme
Court’s finding that no evidence was presented at the first trial to prove
that Dr Brovina had committed the charged criminal offenses. Surla replied
that he could not amend the indictment without the approval of Federal
Public Prosecutor Vukasin Jokanovic, who is currently on a visit to China.
Co-counsel for the defense, Branko Stanic, noted that Flora Brovina had been
held in custody without extension of her detention order since 16 May when
the Supreme Court quashed the Nis District Court’s decision and ordered a
retrial. Because of this violation, he moved that Dr Brovina be released on
recognizance.

After leaving the court, defense lawyers, reporters and Dr Brovina’s husband
visited her at the Pozarevac prison where she told them she had been
notified of the postponement at 9.30 that morning.

Last December, the panel of the District Court in Nis presided by Judge
Marina  Milanovic found Flora Brovina guilty of seditious conspiracy in
conjunction with terrorism and sentenced her to 12 years in prison.
Considering the appeal, the Serbian Supreme Court in May this year set aside
the decision and ordered a new trial.
 _____________________________________




The director of the Centre for Human Law, Natasa Kandic said today that
there
are still about a thousand political prisoners in Serbia. Kandic and lawyer
Rajko Danilovic appealed to the Serbian Supreme Court to grant clemency to
these as they had in the case of Kraljevo journalists Miroslav Filipovic,
who
was released yesterday.

Kosovo Albanians in Serbian jails were political prisoners, said Danilovic,
and had not been accused and convicted of classical criminal acts. Such a
show of mercy would greatly facilitate the return of Serbs to Kosovo, he
said, and was imperative if Yugoslavia wanted to be part of Europe.

Kandic quoted Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica as saying that the
question of Albanian prisoners was connected with the fate of prisoners in
secret jails in Kosovo. "It is not correct for prisoners now in custody to
be
retained as hostages for future negotiations," she added.

 ------------------------------------------

Families of Kosovo abductees appeal to Kostunica

PRISTINA, Wednesday -- The Alliance of Families of Abducted and Missing
Persons in Kosovo today appealed to Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica
not
to allow the release of Albanian prisoners now held in Serbia until
information was obtained about missing Kosovo Serbs. The Alliance informed
the president that they had information that armed and uniformed Albanian
organisations in Kosovo had kidnapped about 1,200 persons between 1998 and
this year.

"We ask you in the name of the pain and uncertainty we have lived in for the
past three years to accept our suggestion not to allow the release of
convicted Albanians until the fate of our innocent family members is known,"
said the Alliance.
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FreeB92  Last update: Oct 13, 2000 17:11 CET

Protesters call for Albanians to be released

17:03 PRISTINA, Friday - Thousands of Albanians from all over Kosovo
today gathered in the centre of Pristina to call for Kosovo Albanian
prisoners in Serbian jails to be released.
     Protest leader Surije Redza demanded that the prisoners be released
indiscriminately.
     Former Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaqi said that,
together with the United Nations, Albanians would apply pressure on the
Belgrade regime in order to resolve the situation of Albanians who had
disappeared or been imprisoned.
     Thaqi, saying that the demands would relayed to senior officials of
the international community, said that there was no was for Serbia to
build a democratic state while it continued to run prisons and
concentration camps.
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