From mentor at alb-net.com Tue Aug 7 07:13:09 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 07:13:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] Macedonians, ethnic Albanians clear way for peace accord; Skopje raid casts shadow over [peace] talks Message-ID: 1. Skopje raid casts shadow over [peace] talks (7 August, 2001) US envoy James Pardew told the BBC he was very disappointed by the Macedonian demands. "They need to think seriously about what they did," he said. 2. Macedonians, ethnic Albanians clear way for peace accord (6 August, 2001) Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political leaders cleared the way for a peace accord in Macedonia, resolving the main remaining sticking point in attempts to avert a new Balkan war. ##### (1) ##### http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1476000/1476940.stm Tuesday, 7 August, 2001, 09:21 GMT 10:21 UK Skopje raid casts shadow over talks Bloodshed has continued despite peace talks Five ethnic Albanians rebels have been killed in a police raid in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, the country's interior minister reported on Tuesday. The dawn operation - the first of its kind in the capital - came hours after a tentative peace deal with the ethnic Albanians was put on hold when the Macedonian Government added extra demands at the last minute. The deal had been reached after days of hard bargaining at talks near the resort of Lake Ohrid. The most divisive issues - the status of the Albanian language and policing - had been resolved, but the Macedonian Government then demanded a timetable for rebel disarmament. As international attempts to breathe life back into the peace talks continued in Ohrid, news of the police raid in Skopje was given by Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski. He told the French news agency AFP that the raid took place in the suburb of Bergino at 0500 (0300GMT) on Tuesday. The suburb is populated mainly by ethnic Albanians. He said a rebel commander known as "Teli" was among those killed. If confirmed, the deaths will be the first in the capital since the conflict began in February. Most of the violence has been confined to northern towns and villages, where the rebels have their strongholds, although the rebels have held some territory outside Skopje. The government demand for a timetable for rebel disarmanent came from Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, who said the deal was off unless the extra condition was met. The disarmament is scheduled to be supervised by Nato, and the organisation says it cannot give an exact timetable for disarmament. A force of 3,500 Nato troops is ready to be deployed in the country when a peace deal has been finalised. US envoy James Pardew told the BBC he was very disappointed by the Macedonian demands. "They need to think seriously about what they did," he said. He added that he hoped that no one was trying to undermine the whole process, saying that the deadlock could be partly due to "signing jitters". Neither the rebels nor the international community could accept the government demands for a ceasefire timetable, he said, because they were an attempt to link a political deal to a military one, for which international mediators had no mandate. The rebels say they are fighting for better rights, but they have been accused of wanting to split some ethnic Albanian areas from the rest of Macedonia. ##### (2) ##### http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010805/1/1a71n.html Monday August 6, 6:34 AM Macedonians, ethnic Albanians clear way for peace accord Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political leaders cleared the way for a peace accord in Macedonia, resolving the main remaining sticking point in attempts to avert a new Balkan war. "Both the Albanians and Macedonians have accepted the content of the document that they have negotiated with our help," the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said, after brokering the deal on the crucial issue of police reform in areas of the country mainly inhabited by ethnic Albanians. The agreement late on Sunday by the two sides at internationally mediated talks means that the major sticking points have now been cleared away and the two sides can move to tying up the loose ends of an overall peace deal. The two sides will meet again early Monday to finalise the details of a comprehensive peace accord. Once the peace accord has been signed NATO peacekeepers will sweep into the former Yugoslav republic, disarming rebels who have been carrying out an insurgency over minority rights, fighting Macedonian forces in the northwestern hills since February. The ethnic Albanian rebels of the National Liberation Army were not at the negotiating table, and whether peace sticks largely depends on how they view the accord. Shortly after Solana's announcement, two loud explosions were heard near the tinderbox northwestern town of Tetovo, close to territory controlled by ethnic Albanian rebels engaged in a six-month-old rebellion. Government spokesmen could not be immediately contacted to give details of the explosions. The talks, which move into their ninth day on Monday, were originally scheduled to be held in Tetovo, but moved to Ohrid because of the security situation around the northwestern town, which has borne the brunt of heavy fighting during the uprising. Solana urged the people of Macedonia to accept the chance for peace, saying he had been impressed by the beauty of the country. "All the efforts will be useless if the people of the country do not want to forget the past and look forward," he said. He said the international community wanted to create a Macedonia which is "stable, prosperous and democratic, and has a European perspective." The issue of the police was at the heart of rebel demands, as it concerns policing in the very areas where they had carried out their insurgency. Ethnic Albanians form up to one third of the two million inhabitants in Macedonia, living mainly in the north of the country on the border with Kosovo and in the west near Albania. The talks had been overshadowed by pressure, as a fragile July 5 truce had been marked by sporadic attacks. Last week, as talks dragged on, the Skopje government also started to talk tough, saying it was ready to use military force to drive out the rebels from the positions they have occupied in the country. Ethnic Albanians had demanded at the talks that the police make-up be proportional to the country's ethnic divide. Under Sunday's deal an extra 1,000 ethnic Albanian police officers will be taken on in two stages over 2002 and 2003. When these are added to ethnic Albanians already in the police, they will make up 23 percent of the national police force. The other major sticking point, the status of the Albanian language in the country, was resolved last week. From mentor at alb-net.com Fri Aug 10 12:57:56 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 12:57:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] MOSQUE SET ON FIRE, [Albanian] SHOPS DEMOLISHED IN MACEDONIAN TOWN Message-ID: Picture of the burned Mosque in Prilep; http://www.alb-net.com/amcc/images/mosqueburning08092001.jpg RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 5, No. 150, Part II, 9 August 2001 website: http://www.rferl.org/newsline MOSQUE SET ON FIRE, SHOPS DEMOLISHED IN MACEDONIAN TOWN. Following the reports of the killing of the 10 soldiers, Interior Minister Ljube Buckovski imposed a 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. curfew on Prilep, where most of the 10 came from, dpa reported on 8 August. Several hundred Macedonians nonetheless demanded weapons to attack a neighboring Albanian village "in order to save Macedonia," Deutsche Welle's Bosnian Service reported. When their request was denied, the crowd set fire to a mosque in central Prilep and ransacked a number of shops owned by Albanian and other Muslim Macedonians. Similar riots took place in Bitola earlier this year after some local men were killed by Albanian fighters (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 2 May 2001). UB/PM ALBANIAN SHOPS DESTROYED IN MACEDONIAN CAPITAL. Several hundred Macedonian citizens who had been forced to leave their villages some weeks ago staged a peaceful protest in front of the Macedonian parliament in Skopje on 8 August. The crowd had gathered to mourn the 10 dead soldiers. As the Skopje daily "Dnevnik" on 9 August reported, the protesters were later joined by a crowd of young Skopje citizens, who later destroyed several Albanian-owned shops in the city center. UB From mentor at alb-net.com Wed Aug 15 11:45:35 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 11:45:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] Albanians slaughtered in Macedonia; Fleeing Albanians shot in the back by police; Macedonian Troops Accused of Rampage Message-ID: 1. Albanians slaughtered in Macedonia "MACEDONIAN security forces shot dead five unarmed ethnic Albanian villagers in cold blood on the eve of Monday's ceasefire signing, witnesses said yesterday." "The victims on the hillside had each been shot from behind as they fled. Bajram Jashari, a 30-year-old farmer was lying on his back, not far from two dead cows." 2. Fleeing Albanians shot in the back by police "They had black clothes and masks that covered their faces. I couldn't recognise them. They had Macedonian police insignia on their arms. They were shouting 'Come out, come out from the house', and were swearing at us." "He said the police then began to set alight to his house. "I ran and hid in a ditch, and I shouted to my sons to run away." 3. Macedonian Troops Accused of Rampage "The few ethnic Albanians who remained in Ljuboten on Tuesday said police entered the village Sunday and killed at least nine civilians, burned and looted 25 houses and killed as many as five dozen sheep and cattle. The victims' bodies, scattered on the streets, remained unburied until Tuesday." ### (1) ### http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/08/15/wmac15.xml Albanians slaughtered in Macedonia (Filed: 15/08/2001) MACEDONIAN security forces shot dead five unarmed ethnic Albanian villagers in cold blood on the eve of Monday's ceasefire signing, witnesses said yesterday. In the worst atrocity in the six-month conflict, dozens of soldiers and police stormed into Ljuboten on Sunday opening fire on villagers and burning at least a dozen houses, locals said. Two men were said to have been dragged from a cellar in which they were hiding and killed in the street. Three more were said by villagers to have been shot as they tried to escape across fields. The bloodied bodies of the Albanians lay yesterday as they had fallen. One was on his back at the end of the small tobacco grove, two more were higher up the hill. On the narrow road leading back into the hillside village were the corpses of the two who witnesses said had been singled out by Macedonian troops and executed. Witnesses said that at least another five were killed, that many more were beaten and that 12 were missing, last seen being led away by Macedonian police officers. In the bloody annals of the Yugoslav wars the scale of the killings merits barely a footnote, but with a peace deal only a day old and cease-fire violations beginning to multiply they threaten to plunge Macedonia back towards civil war. They also underline the risks for British troops who are expected to deploy in Macedonia on Saturday as the first elements of a 3,500-strong Nato force. Nato's North Atlantic Council meets this morning to discuss the mission to disarm the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Force rebels. Their task was given hope last night after Nato officials said that the rebels had signed a letter of intent promising to hand over their weapons. The Macedonian government yesterday denied that the dead were civilians, insisting that they were guerrillas. The Interior Ministry said "five terrorists" had died in Ljuboten on Saturday and Sunday. But the scene in Ljuboten, four miles north of Skopje, yesterday was grimly reminiscent of crimes committed in Kosovo and before that Bosnia. The victims on the hillside had each been shot from behind as they fled. Bajram Jashari, a 30-year-old farmer was lying on his back, not far from two dead cows. He was dressed in brown trousers, a studded black leather belt, white socks and black slip-on shoes. His body was punctured by bullet holes. Nearby his 65-year-old father Qani rocked gently, tears streaming down his creased face. He said: "They set fire to the house we were hiding in and we all jumped out of a low window. I hid in a ditch and told my sons to run for their lives. That's when they were shot." A little higher up the hill was the body of Bajram's 28-year-old brother, Kadri. Wearing a tight black suit embossed with the label Phoenix and a bloodied grey T-shirt and black shoes, Kadri had two bullet wounds in his back. About 50 yards from the bodies of Kadri and Bajram lay Xhelal Bajrami, a 29-year-old cousin. Xhelal had been shot in the back three times. His arm lay at an unnatural angle underneath him. According to evidence collected from interviews and a continuing investigation by Western monitors the Ljuboten operation began early on Sunday morning. Macedonians were furious after eight of their soldiers were killed nearby last week by anti-tank mines. Several dozen special police units, backed up by soldiers and reservists, entered the village and moved from house to house. Witnesses say they began burning, looting and killing. Some of the houses were still smoking yesterday. As people hid in cellars, police and soldiers sprayed automatic fire through the narrow streets. Witnesses said that at least two men were called out of the cellars by name and summarily shot. The body of one, Sulejman Bajrami, was still spreadeagled in the road yesterday. His head had been crushed, after, locals said, an armoured personnel carrier was driven over his corpse. His shoes lay neatly by his feet, placed there by his grieving mother. Locals said that Muharem Ramadani, 68, whose head was covered by a piece of plastic sheeting, was shot when he tried to prevent soldiers taking away one of his sons. Misim Jashari, 76, survived. He said: "They had balaclavas on and Macedonian police insignia. "One rolled up his mask and his hair was blonde underneath." When the police finally left Albanians claimed that they heard them singing "Long Live Macedonia" and "We killed the Albanians". ### (2) ### http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,537034,00.html Fleeing Albanians shot in the back by police Guardian gains access to site of alleged atrocity by Macedonian police force Nicholas Wood in Ljuboten Wednesday August 15, 2001 The Guardian The discovery of the bodies of five men shot in the head and chest in a village five miles north of Skopje yesterday prompted the accusation of war crimes by the Macedonian police and further undermined the chance of resolving the country's conflict. The bodies were found in Ljuboten, a mainly Albanian village, two days after teams of police swept though the village in what was described as an anti-terrorist operation. Local people say the men were shot in the back as they tried to flee the police, and deny that they were members of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group the National Liberation Army, a claim backed up by a western observer who was nearby at the time. The observer said the police operation and the killing that followed may have been prompted by a clash between the NLA and the security forces close by. It is the first time such a serious allegation has been made since the insurgency began in February. The men were all killed on Sunday afternoon after the security forces shelled Ljuboten and the surrounding area. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the International Committee of the Red Cross had tried to enter the village but had been denied access by the Macedonian police. The Guardian was among the first to go into the village since Sunday. Relatives of the dead say the police began to move into the village and set buildings alight once the shelling had stopped. They also forced people out of their homes. Qani Jashari said he was hiding in his house with his two sons, Bajram, 30, and Kadri, 27, when the police arrived at about 3pm. "They had black clothes and masks that covered their faces. I couldn't recognise them. They had Macedonian police insignia on their arms. They were shouting 'Come out, come out from the house', and were swearing at us." He said the police then began to set alight to his house. "I ran and hid in a ditch, and I shouted to my sons to run away." Both of his sons were shot dead. Bajram's body lay on a slope in a tobacco field. A British police officer working with the OSCE examined his and all of the bodies lying where they had been shot. Bajram had been shot several times in the legs, and in the lower back. The exit wound by his neck suggested that the bullet had struck him as he lay on the ground facing away from his assailant. "This one here they killed and the other one is further up," Mr Jashari said, looking at Bajram's body. A hundred metres up the hill in a straw field lay his other son, also shot in the back. He had returned from Austria 10 days earlier to bring money to the family. Halfway between the two brothers lay the body of Xhelal Bajrami, a 25-year-old farmer. He had two small bullet holes in his back, another in his backside, and three more in his legs. In the village another two bodies lay beside the road, one of them Xhelal's brother Syliman. Villagers say the men were among a group of 12 ordered out of a basement; 10 were arrested by the police and taken away. Syliman was shot in the head. A piece of plastic sheeting covered the gaping hole in his skull. Next to him was a long bloody tyre mark where an armoured personnel carrier had run over his body. Fifty metres away Muharem Ramadani, 68, lay on his back with his mouth open. Two small holes in his back and wounds in his chest suggest that he, too, had been shot in the back and left to lie on a concrete slope. Next to his hand lay two cigarette lighters, a cigarette holder and a comb. A statement by the ministry of the interior, the department responsible for the police operation, described the dead men as "terrorists". Antonio Milososki, a government spokesman, dismissed the allegation that the men had been killed in cold blood. "This is one more trap for Macedonia's democratic elected government to be accused about the repression of the poor Albanians who are fighting for their human rights," he said. There is no other way to find justification for the rebel movement." He added that Ljuboten had been too dangerous for the police to enter and launch their own investigation. Shortly after the Guardian's visit, the police closed access to the village. oThe rebels have agreed to hand their weapons over to the Nato soldiers who will be sent into Macedonia when promises of an amnesty and political reforms have been secured, a diplomatic source said yesterday. The political leader of the NLA, Ali Ahmeti, agreed the deal with brokers: a breakthrough towards implementing the political peace plan was agreed on Monday. Guardian Unlimited ? Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ### (3) ### http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2D000066137aug15 Macedonian Troops Accused of Rampage From Associated Press August 15 2001 SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Ethnic Albanians on Tuesday accused government troops of rampaging through their village near Macedonia's capital, killing civilians and burning houses. The government said five ethnic Albanians were killed but that none was a civilian. International officials who visited the village of Ljuboten confirmed that bodies had been found but would not say how many. The accusation against the government came the same day that ethnic Albanian guerrillas agreed to hand their weapons to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in a huge boost for a landmark political accord to end discrimination against the minority Albanians, diplomatic and rebel sources said. Rebel reluctance to disarm before the sweeping range of reforms took effect was overcome when the government promised the guerrillas amnesty and a definite timetable for minority rights, the sources said. Government forces pounded Ljuboten with mortars and tanks Sunday in an offensive that officials said was in response to a land mine that killed eight soldiers two days before. The few ethnic Albanians who remained in Ljuboten on Tuesday said police entered the village Sunday and killed at least nine civilians, burned and looted 25 houses and killed as many as five dozen sheep and cattle. The victims' bodies, scattered on the streets, remained unburied until Tuesday. "There are seven killed civilians who have been summarily executed," Iljaz Bajrami, a Ljuboten resident, said by telephone. "Apart from the seven, we earlier buried two others in the courtyards of private houses," he said. Harald Schenker, a spokesman for a delegation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that visited Ljuboten on Tuesday, said that "some bodies have been found." He declined to elaborate. Amanda Williamson, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said police refused to let them into Ljuboten. A police spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied that a massacre occurred and that police were blocking access to international organizations. Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski said five ethnic Albanians who were killed in the fighting belonged to a "terrorist group." From mentor at alb-net.com Wed Aug 22 10:54:32 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 10:54:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] HRW: Police Abuse Against Albanians Continues in Macedonia (Human Rights Watch - 8/22/2001) Message-ID: "Persistent police abuse in Macedonia is simply shocking. Macedonia must urgently address the violence in its police stations. Ethnic Albanians are being severely abused, and in some cases beaten to death, without the slightest prospect of accountability." Elizabeth Andersen Executive Director, HRW Europe and Central Asia division http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/08/macedonia0822.htm Police Abuse Against Albanians Continues in Macedonia Peace Agreement Doesn't End Violence (Skopje, August 22, 2001) Police abuse against ethnic Albanians remains a serious concern in Macedonia despite the recent signing of a political agreement aimed to end the six-month old conflict, Human Rights Watch said today. On August 13, 2001-the same day the Macedonian government and ethnic Albanian leaders signed a framework peace agreement-police officers in Skopje beat to death an Albanian man suspected of being a rebel. "Persistent police abuse in Macedonia is simply shocking," said Elizabeth Andersen, Executive Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. "Macedonia must urgently address the violence in its police stations. Ethnic Albanians are being severely abused, and in some cases beaten to death, without the slightest prospect of accountability." Human Rights Watch also urged that international organizations operating in Macedonia dramatically increase their human rights monitoring presence in the country. On Monday, August 13, 2001, police officers guarding Skopje's main hospital arrested four ethnic Albanians who had come to the hospital to pick up an elderly Albanian relative undergoing kidney dialysis treatment. The police searched their car and claimed to find a bullet in the trunk. The police then proceeded to beat the four men in the street. The men were then taken onto the hospital grounds and beaten continuously for several hours with heavy metal cables, baseball bats, police truncheons, and gun butts, amidst jeering from the civilian crowd that had gathered. Following this, the four men were taken to the "Beko One" police station, where they were subjected to more beatings, had urine and burning cigarettes thrown at them, and were threatened with execution. Following interventions from their ethnic Macedonian lawyer and a police officer who knew the men, they were released the next morning. One of the men, twenty-nine year old Nazmi Aliu, father of a six-year-old and a two-year-old, died that day at the hospital from the injuries he received from the police beatings. Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed two of the surviving men, who gave consistent and credible accounts of their ordeal, and inspected their severe bruises from the beatings. One of the men, who was a week later still unable to stand because of the injuries he received during the beatings, told Human Rights Watch: [After claiming to find the bullet], they started beating us right there. One police officer hit me with a thick wire cable and slammed my head into the wall. My front teeth were in great pain. They were beating us for about one hour in the street, all of them, with cables, rubber truncheons, baseball bats, gun handles. There were lots of civilians there looking, they were swearing at us. We couldn't walk, so they dragged us inside the main gate [of the hospital] to some stores near a fountain. While they were dragging us, they were beating us very badly. I lost my consciousness there from the beating, and they took water from the fountain to revive us. . . . Then they dragged us out and put us in a police van and took us to the police station. They dragged us out of the van, and the commander said, "Who wishes to beat the UCK [rebels]?" They formed a column of police officers, some on our left and some on our right, and one of the officers would drag us through the column and they would beat us . . . . [In the cell,] the commander came and opened the door and everyone came inside. They beat us very badly, I couldn't move to protect myself, we were just lying like dead bodies there. Then the commander said, "OK, it's enough now, we will do it again after five minutes." He locked the door... One police officer grabbed a long metal stick and started beating us through the bars. We couldn't move, we just lay there and couldn't protect ourselves. They took a basket of water and urinated in it, and threw it on us. They kept pouring water on us, just to keep us conscious. They would swear at us, saying, "You UCK motherfuckers, we are going to kill you slowly." Police abuse is an endemic problem in Macedonia, and was one of the main grievances raised by the ethnic Albanian rebel National Liberation Army (NLA; UCK in Albanian)) to justify its resort to arms. The framework peace agreement signed last week provides for the gradual integration of ethnic Albanians into the predominantly ethnic Macedonian police force. "The peace agreement lays out a long-term plan for addressing the problem," Andersen stated. "What is also needed are immediate measures to curb abuse, including international human rights monitors regularly visiting police stations and insisting on accountability in cases like these." Human Rights Watch has issued two reports on police abuse in Macedonia, in 1996 and in 1998. (See A Threat to Stability, June 1996; and Police Violence in Macedonia, April 1998) The rights group has documented widespread abuse at police stations since the beginning of the conflict. (See Human Rights Watch release, Macedonian Police Abuses Documented, May 31, 2001). Human Rights Watch also expressed concern about the safety of at least twenty-seven ethnic Albanian men who were detained on Sunday, August 12, 2001 by the Macedonian police during an operation in the village of Ljuboten. In addition to the detentions, the Ljuboten operation resulted in the deaths of at least ten ethnic Albanian civilians. The Macedonian police have claimed that the operation targeted an NLA stronghold, but they have produced no proof to counteract mounting evidence that the victims of the police action were civilians, not fighters. On Saturday, August 18, relatives found the body of one man missing from Ljuboten, thirty-five-year-old Atulah Qaini, at the morgue in Skopje. The body of Qaini, who had last been seen in police custody in the village, bore clear signs of severe beatings and had a cracked skull when inspected by Human Rights Watch researchers. Most of the other men have been located alive in police detention, but bear clear signs of severe beatings according to relatives. A mother interviewed by Human Rights Watch who had a thirteen- year-old son detained in the village said that his entire face was bruised and swollen when she went to visit him in prison. From mentor at alb-net.com Mon Aug 27 07:46:11 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 07:46:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] Massacre report names Macedonia interior minister Message-ID: "A tape filmed by Macedonian Television and seen by The Telegraph shows Mr Boskovski standing on the balcony of an empty house above Ljuboten and looking down into the village with other security officers. Houses can be seen burning and there is constant noise of shelling and machinegun fire." "The taped television narrative says: "Ljubce Boskovski was present during the whole operation of the Macedonian security forces."" "Outside, Fasli heard a baying mob shouting "Let us kill them. Gas chambers for Shiptars!" Shiptar is a derogatory term for an Albanian." http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F08%2F26%2Fwmace26.xml Massacre report names Macedonia interior minister By Jessica Berry in Ljuboten (Filed: 26/08/2001) The Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk) MACEDONIA'S hardline interior minister will come under pressure this week to explain his role in the worst alleged atrocity in the six-month conflict with ethnic Albanian rebels, The Telegraph can reveal. Ljubce Boskovski, an ultra-nationalist and a bitter opponent of the current British-led Nato disarmament mission, will be accused by Human Rights Watch, an American-based pressure group, of involvement in the incident in Ljuboten. The accusation will be made in a damning report to be submitted to the Macedonian government, but its timing has alarmed some foreign diplomats who fear that Mr Boskovski and his supporters could use it to rail against the West and oppose the Nato mission to collect weapons from the rebels. Operation Essential Harvest, which starts tomorrow, involves 1,900 British soldiers at the head of a total deployment of nearly 5,000 Nato troops. The Macedonian security operation in Ljuboten two weeks ago left at least 10 ethnic Albanians dead. In a series of interviews last week, villagers described a three-day police operation in which civilians were tortured and shot dead in cold blood. The government claims that it was hunting down rebels from the National Liberation Army (NLA) after 10 Macedonian soldiers were ambushed and killed and eight servicemen were blown up by land mines. A tape filmed by Macedonian Television and seen by The Telegraph shows Mr Boskovski standing on the balcony of an empty house above Ljuboten and looking down into the village with other security officers. Houses can be seen burning and there is constant noise of shelling and machinegun fire. The taped television narrative says: "Ljubce Boskovski was present during the whole operation of the Macedonian security forces." The interior minister has not replied to requests for comment by The Telegraph, but he told journalists that there had been no massacre of civilians. Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch who is writing the report after a series of interviews with witnesses, said, however, that the document would detail a massacre and raise questions about Mr Boskovski's role. The hardline interior minister controls not only Macedonia's uniformed police force but also, according to diplomats, a renegade crew of paramilitaries known as the Lions. The Macedonian police claim that the Ljuboten operation was targeting an NLA stronghold, and that eight NLA members were killed and 12 were captured. Villagers, however, gave a dramatically different account to The Sunday last week. "There were children playing in the street. Suddenly a grenade hit one of the kids. The boy flew in the air and there was smoke and blood. Everyone ran," said Fasli, 25, a farmer. When he tried to escape on Saturday he reached a checkpoint where, he said, there were "many police, some wearing balaclavas, and dozens of civilians with guns, axes and sticks". He was then taken to a nearby police station where he and other men were severely beaten by masked policemen. "The carpet was filled with blood," he said. Outside, Fasli heard a baying mob shouting "Let us kill them. Gas chambers for Shiptars!" Shiptar is a derogatory term for an Albanian. Elmas, 55, a paraplegic, watched his 33-year-old son, Rami Youssef, die in agony. Unable to move, he could not help him. "They bombed my gate then they came to my house. There were 20 police in my yard." An explosion blew out his front door. This was followed by machinegun fire. He said his son was hit in the side and stomach. "He died very slowly. It took two hours." Aziz Barami said he saw his son, Suleyman, murdered after they were ordered out of a basement where they had been hiding with other villagers. "They took us through a small gate where there were eight men lying face-down on the ground with their hands above their heads. We were told to lie down too. " A policeman kicked Suleyman in the head. He was in pain and stood up and then the policeman shot him and then everyone was shooting. I heard one say: `This pig is still moving.' Then there was another single gunshot. Suleyman tried to flee and then they shot him in the head." From mentor at alb-net.com Thu Aug 30 10:45:56 2001 From: mentor at alb-net.com (Mentor Cana) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 10:45:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [AMCC-News] Foto FACTS: 1) Macedonian police brutality, abuse and massacres in Luboten/Ljuboten on Aug 11-12th, 2001; 2) Destruction of Albanian property and Islamic cultural objects Message-ID: 1. Photographs from Luboten/Ljuboten Macedonian police brutality, abuse and massacres in Luboten/Ljuboten on Aug 11th and 12th, 2001. http://www.alb-net.com/amcc/abuse_violence.htm Note: The pictures are very disturbing. You can view more photographs at the following location: http://www.alb-net.com/amcc/pics/ml/ http://www.alb-net.com/amcc/pics/ml/gb http://www.alb-net.com/amcc/pics/ml/aq Some of this pictures correspond directly to the Human Rights Watch Report from Aug 22nd, 2001: "Police Abuse Against Albanians Continues in Macedonia". URL: http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/08/macedonia0822.htm 2. Destruction of Albanian property and Islamic cultural objects Nikushtak: http://www.inter-liber.com/chom/images/foto2.htm Likove: http://www.inter-liber.com/chom/images/foto3.htm Shkup: http://www.inter-liber.com/chom/foto1.htm