[Kcc-News] Dr. Flora Brovina released (fwd)

[Mentor Cana]

Kosovo Albanian Activist Freed

Updated 10:10 AM ET November 1, 2000
POZAREVAC, Yugoslavia (AP) - Prominent Kosovo Albanian activist Flora
Brovina, sentenced to a long prison term last year for terrorism, was
released Wednesday, witnesses and her lawyer said.
Brovina left the prison here late Wednesday afternoon escorted by
officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the U.N. human
rights representative in Belgrade, her lawyers and officials of
non-government human rights groups.

"Justice has been served," lawyer Branko Stanic told reporters at the
prison gate as Brovina was driven away.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica's legal adviser, Filip Golubovic,
was present at the prison. He brought the presidential order for Brovina's
release, human rights officials said.

In Kosovo's capital, Pristina, ethnic Albanian human rights activists said
Brovina was expected to arrive Wednesday evening. Her husband and son were
driving to the boundary at Medare to welcome her, they said.

Brovina, a 50-year-old pediatrician and women's rights activist, has
become a rallying point for people in Kosovo, a majority-ethnic Albanian
province in southern Yugoslavia. Hundreds of ethnic Albanians have been
held in Serb jails since the Kosovo conflict, which began when
then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic sent troops into the province
to crush separatist sentiment there.

Hopes for the prisoners' release have risen with Milosevic's ouster from
power last month and his replacement by Kostunica.