[ALBSA-Info] Kosovo student leader sentenced to 15 years imprisonment

[Mimoza Meholli]

From: Wolfgang Plarre <wplarre at bndlg.de>

>Monday, March 13 11:28 PM SGT
>
>Kosovo student leader sentenced to 15 years imprisonment
>
>NIS, Yugoslavia, March 13 (AFP) -
>
>A Kosovo Albanian student leader was sentenced Monday to 15 years in
>prison on terrorism charges after he refused to defend himself before a
>Serb court.
>      The court in the southern Serbian town of Nis issued the verdict
>after only two days of hearings in the trial of Albin Kurti, who as
>leader of the Kosovo Albanians Independent Student Union led street
>protests against Serbian rule in his home province in 1997 and 1998.
>      He was arrested by Serb police during last year's NATO bombing
>campaign against Yugoslavia, and accused of being a member of a
>"terrorist group", the term used by Belgrade for separatist guerrilla
>movement the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
>      Kurti, who worked as an assistant to KLA spokesman Adem Demaci,
>made a defiant statement at the opening of the trial on Thursday,
>accusing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's regime of "fascism".
>      He refused to mount a defence or respond to prosecution questions,
>saying he did not recognise the court's legitimacy.
>      "This court has nothing to do with truth and justice, it serves the
>policies of Milosevic's regime which has kept Kosovo under occupation,"
>he said.
>      The court-appointed defence lawyer, Branislav Ciric, said he would
>appeal the verdict despite Kurti's objections.
>      The prosecutor also said Kurti "organised first-aid courses" among
>Kosovo's Albanian students with the purpose of "assisting wounded KLA
>members and donating blood."
>      Ahead of Monday's verdict, Kurti again rejected offering a defence
>and said: "The defence lawyer, the prosecutor and the court are all the
>same."
>      Kurti, wearing civilian clothes and bearing no visible signs of
>physical mistreatment, reacted calmly to the verdict.
>      At the start of the trial he had said: "It is not important for me
>whether you sentence me or for how long."
>      "Everything I did, I did voluntarily, with dignity and I am proud
>of it and would do it again."
>      The trial was attended by the representatives of the UN Human
>Rights office in Belgrade, Human Rights Watch and non-government
>Belgrade groups the Humanitarian Law Center and the Committee of
>Jurists.
>      They declined to comment on the sentence.
>      Kurti is one of about 1,300 Kosovo Albanians still held in Serbia
>on terrorism charges, according to the Humanitarian Law Center.
>      In December, ethnic Albanian human rights activist Flora Brovina
>was sentenced to 12 years in prison for "terrorist activities" in a
>trial condemned by the United States and international human rights
>groups.
>      More than 400 Albanians have been released since mid-June, when
>Belgrade transferred about 2,050 prisoners from Kosovo as it withdrew
>from the southern province in the face of NATO air attacks, the
>International Committee for the Red Cross said.
>
>Copyright © 2000 AFP
>
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