[A-PAL] A-PAL Newsletter, Oct. 30, 2000

[Alice Mead]

A-PAL NEWSLETTER
OCTOBER 31, 2000

            A-PAL message:   IT AIN'T OVER TIL IT'S OVER!

 Conflicting news articles reveal the present confusion in Serbia regarding
the release of the Albanian prisoners. Don't lose heart --please help us
keep pushing international and Serb officials to maintain human rights
standards, even in Serbia, as it is now "welcomed" into OCSE, the EU, and
the UN!!!
           AS REV. JACKSON SAYS--"KEEP HOPE ALIVE!"

 SUGGESTED ACTIONS--
1. EMAIL-ACTION: RELEASE THE  ALBANIAN PRISONERS NOW! WE HAVE 48 ADVOCATES
NOW, WE NEED 400 MORE! PLEASE KEEP THE PRESSURE ON THE INTERNATIONAL
OFFICIALS!
             http://www.kosova-info-line.de/APP/
 Please forward the idea and address of the website to people,
        you think they might be interested in joining!

2. For further information contact the Press and Public Information Section
of the OSCE Secretariat, tel.: (+ 43-1) 514 36 180 or e-mail:
info at osce.org

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http://www.freeb92.net/archive/e/index.phtml?Y=2000&M=10&D=30

FreeB92  Last update: Oct 30, 2000 22:44 CET

Brovina for release tomorrow

22:44 POZAREVAC, Monday - Albanian poet Flora Brovina is expected to be
released from Pozarevac prison tomorrow, her lawyer, Branko Stanic, said
today.
     Stanic had earlier told media that Brovina would be released today,
on the instruction of the Serbian Justice Ministry.
     A source in Pozarevac prison quoted by Beta today said that the
necessary documentation from the ministry had not been received by 3.00
p.m. and prisoners could not be released after that time.
     Brovina was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment last December on
charges of conspiring for terrorism. The trial attracted international
attention for its slipshod legal procedures and lack of evidence.
_______________________________________________________________________

Yugoslavia to pardon political prisoners -agency


BELGRADE, Oct 29 (Reuters) - New Yugoslav authorities will soon pardon all
political prisoners and draft dodgers in a symbolic break with the previous
regime of Slobodan Milosevic, state news agency Tanjug reported on Sunday.

Tanjug quoted Belgrade University law professor Stevan Lilic as saying that
political prisoners would be released after the federal parliament adopted
an
amnesty law prepared by an expert team under his leadership.

"Amnesty should mark a discontinuity with the previous repressive regime and
the beginning of a period of confidence our society is entering," said
Lilic.

The team was formed on October 16 after a meeting between new President
Vojislav Kostunica, himself a legal expert in constitutional and civil
rights
issues, and the Yugoslav Committee of Lawyers.

Along with political prisoners, victims of political repression, those
jailed
for harming Yugoslavia's reputation, its constitutional order and social
system, the amnesty would apply to those who had committed military criminal
acts such as avoiding the draft and army service.

Lilic said that the Dayton agreement which ended a bloody war in Bosnia in
1995 stipulated such a law, also obliging the former Yugoslav republics of
Bosnia and Croatia to adopt it.

Since he came to power on October 7 after popular protests when Milosevic
refused to recognise his election defeat, Kostunica has pardoned Miroslav
Filipovic, a reporter jailed for espionage by a military court.

Outgoing Justice Minister Petar Jojic said last week he had refused
Kostunica's demand to release Flora Brovina, an ethnic Albanian poet and
human rights activists, sentenced to 12 years in jail for terrorism.

Jojic, whose post will be occupied by one of Kostunica's backers later this
week, said Kostunica had given no evidence that Brovina was not guilty.

09:36 10-29-00
________________________________________________



http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44596-2000Oct30.html

Jailed Albanians Pose Problem For Belgrade

Albin Kurti, center, and other ethnic Albanian prisoners in the prison yard
in Pozarevac, Yugoslavia. (AP)

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 31, 2000; Page A16

POZAREVAC, Yugoslavia, Oct. 30 °V°V "I consider myself a hostage of war,"
Kosovo student leader Albin Kurti announced as he was escorted into a chilly
prison interview room by his Serbian jailers today.


Arrested by Serbian police during the Kosovo conflict last year and
sentenced
to 15 years in prison on terrorism charges, Kurti is one of approximately
800
ethnic Albanians still being held in Serbian jails nearly four weeks after
the street revolution that overthrew Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.


The question of what to do with them has emerged as one of the most thorny
issues facing Yugoslavia's new president, Vojislav Kostunica, as he attempts
to consolidate power. The United States and other Western countries have
called for their immediate release. Kostunica has suggested he wants to do
that, but there is little political support for such a step within Serbia,
Yugoslavia's main republic, at a time when hundreds of Serbs are missing in
Kosovo.


Kurti and the other ethnic Albanian detainees, members of Kosovo's majority
population, were rounded up during the 11-week NATO bombing campaign against
Yugoslavia last year. They were transferred to prisons outside Kosovo just
before the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army withdrew from Kosovo and NATO
forces took over.


According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Serbian
authorities at one time held around 2,000 ethnic Albanian prisoners, but the
number has decreased sharply as a result of partial releases over the past
18
months. Many of those who remain in Serbian jails have been sentenced to
long
prison terms.


In a rare interview with a foreign visitor, Kurti, 25, projected an image of
total defiance, insisting that his prison experience had strengthened his
determination to fight for a fully independent Kosovo, which remains
officially a part of Serbia. While welcoming Milosevic's overthrow as a
"very
positive event," he depicted Kostunica as no better than his predecessor on
the question of rights for ethnic Albanians.
"On issues concerning Kosovo, Kostunica has the same opinions as Milosevic.
In fact, he often uses exactly the same expressions," said Kurti, who is one
of the most prominent prisoners. He organized a series of anti-Serb
demonstrations in the Kosovo capital of Pristina before the war, and was a
top adviser to the Kosovo Liberation Army, the guerrilla force that fought
the Yugoslav army in Kosovo.

The remaining ethnic Albanian prisoners are scattered in jails throughout
Serbia, including in Nis, Sremska Mitrovica, and here in Pozarevac,
Milosevic's home town. Kurti said he shared a 21-by-30-foot prison cell with
40 other ethnic Albanian prisoners, most of whom were detained during the
war.


Like other prisoners, Kurti complained of harsh beatings by his Serbian
jailers during the early days of his detention, particularly when he was
still being held in Kosovo. But he said that conditions had generally
improved since his transfer to Pozarevac. He spends much of his time in jail
reading books sent to him by relatives in Kosovo, including works by Fyodor
Dostoyevsky, Jean-Paul Sartre, James Joyce and Bertolt Brecht.


The prison food, said Kurti, is so poor that he and other Albanians rely
almost entirely on food packages from Kosovo. "Usually, we eat only the
bread," he said, adding that the prisoners joked about the "Auschwitz soup."
In the interview, he spoke in English, but his words were translated into
Serbian at the insistence of two Serbian prison guards who monitored the
interview.
While most of the ethnic Albanians being held in Pozarevac have been
sentenced for political crimes, such as subversion and conspiracy, a
minority
are ordinary criminals, convicted of crimes such as robbery and murder.
Kurti
called on the Serbian authorities to release all the Albanian prisoners at
once.
"The ordinary criminals should be sent to serve their sentences in Kosovo,"
he said.
Initially, Kostunica linked the release of Kosovo Albanian prisoners to
progress on tracking down an estimated 1,000 Serbs who have disappeared in
Kosovo since the end of the war. More recently, however, his aides have said
the president is considering a general amnesty for Albanian political
detainees, to be submitted to the Yugoslav parliament in a few weeks.
Attempts to arrange the early release of a prominent Albanian physician and
poet, Flora Brovina, who is being held in the Pozarevac women's prison, have
run into a series of snags, according to Kostunica aides.
The outgoing Yugoslav minister of justice, Petar Jojic, who belongs to the
extreme nationalist Radical Party, refused to authorize Brovina's release,
arguing that she had committed "very serious crimes."
The justice ministry of Serbia readily agreed to a reporter's request to
visit the Pozarevac jail, but said it was unable to authorize a meeting with
Brovina on the grounds that her case is still under review by the courts.
A former engineering student who helped organize an underground university
in
Kosovo, Kurti went on trial in Nis last March on charges of terrorism and
conspiracy against the state. "I told the judges that I was proud of what I
had done, and would do it all over again, if I had the chance," he said.


› 2000 The Washington Post Company

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

 JUST TO REMIND OUR A-PAL READERS--HERE IS A STATEMENT FROM OSCE IN
SEPTEMBER, 2000 CALLING FOR THE RELEASE OF PRISONERS. YUGOSLAVIA NOW ATTENDS
OSCE MEETINGS AND CLAIMS IT "HAS PROBLEMS" RELEASING THE ALBANIAN PRISONERS!
For further information contact the Press and Public Information Section
of the OSCE Secretariat, tel.: (+ 43-1) 514 36 180 or e-mail:
info at osce.org
_________________________________________________
Press Release
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
Chairman-in-Office
07 September 2000

OSCE Permanent Council calls on FRY to release detainees

VIENNA, 7 September 2000 - The 54-member OSCE Permanent Council called
on the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) today to
speed up legal procedures and to rapidly release from detention in
Belgrade the two British OMIK members, Adrian Prangnell and John Yore
and their two Canadian friends, Shawn Going and Liam Hall. There is no
legitimate basis for their continued detention.
     At the meeting, Permanent Council delegates expressed a strong
negative reaction to the decision by the military authorities of the FRY
to extend the detention of the four persons for one further month. The
prolongation of the detention period was regarded as motivated by
political purposes.
     The Permanent Council expressed its deep regret that diplomatic
efforts have until now met with only little response from the
authorities of the FRY. Though the fact is welcomed that the detainees
are no longer being held in solitary confinement, there remains concern
that they are being denied regular contact with their families. The
authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia are called upon to
respect all their international obligations.
     The Austrian Chairperson of the Permanent Council, Ambassador Jutta
Stefan-Bastl, recalled that the two British citizens detained are
members of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo. The detention is therefore not
only regarded as a bilateral matter, but as a concern of the whole OSCE.
The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Austrian Foreign Minister Benita
Ferrero-Waldner, remains concerned by the detention and will continue
her diplomatic efforts in order to achieve a rapid release of all the
detained.

For further information contact the Press and Public Information Section
of the OSCE Secretariat, tel.: (+ 43-1) 514 36 180 or e-mail:
info at osce.org

Press and Public Information Section
OSCE Secretariat
Kaertner Ring 5-7, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Tel.:(+43-1) 514 36 180, Fax: (+43-1) 514 36 105
E-mail: info at osce.org
Website: http://www.osce.org
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