Istok (Istog)
Municipality
Istok
was relatively quiet in 1998, compared to the other municipalities of Kosovo.
Serbs made up between 15 and 20 percent of the area's 50,000 inhabitants.
Tension increased in early 1999, as the KLA increased
its activities in Istok and the Serbian police responded with violence.
During the NATO bombing, there was direct fighting between the KLA and
the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police. Paramilitary forces were also present
in the area. According to a UNHCR shelter survey, 5,049 of the 7,081 houses
in Istok municipality were either heavily damaged or completely destroyed,
although it is not clear how much of this damage was due to NATO bombing.1
According to the OSCE, thousands of ethnic Albanians
in Istok were forcibly expelled from their homes and fled to Starodvorane
(Staradran) and Zablace (Zablaq) villages, which was under KLA control.
When the KLA retreated from the area in April, government forces robbed
and beat many of the ethnic Albanians who had fled there as well as committed
some extrajudicial exeuctions.2
The single largest killing in Istok municipality
took place in the Dubrava prison, to the east of Istok town. Citing Serbian
and military activity in the direct vicinity, NATO bombed the prison on
May 19 and May 21, killing an estimated nineteen inmates. Over the following
days, as many as ninety-six inmates were killed by government forces.
The Serbian police in Istok were under the jurisdiction
of the Secretariat of Internal Affairs (SUP) in Pec, which covered the
municipalities of Pec, Klina, and Istok. The commander of the Pec SUP during
the war was Col. Boro Vlahovic.3
Dubrava Prison
One of the
worst incidents of the war took place in the Dubrava prison, Kosovo's largest
detention facility, when prisoners were massacred by security forces after
a NATO bombing attack there. Since all of the survivors of the massacre
were transferred to prisons in Serbia after the attack, reliable accounts
of the killings did not emerge until after the war, when some of the prisoners
were released.4 Human Rights Watch spoke separately with two survivors
who had witnessed the killing. Their stories closely match the testimonies
of four other survivors that have appeared in the Serbian, Albanian, or
international press.5
Citing Serbian and Yugoslav military activity in
the area, NATO bombed the prison on May 19 and again on May 21, 1999, killing
at least nineteen ethnic Albanian prisoners and causing chaos in the facility.
According to the Yugoslav government, some prisoners took advantage of
the bombing and tried to escape the prison; the guards were struggling
to maintain order. On May 22, prison officials ordered the approximately
1,000 prisoners to line up in the prison yard. After a few minutes, they
were fired upon from the prison walls and guard towers with machine guns
and grenades, killing at least seventy people. Over the next twenty-four
hours, prison guards, special police, and possibly paramilitaries attacked
prisoners who were hiding in the prison's buildings, basements, and sewers,
killing at least another twelve inmates.
It is not clear precisely how many prisoners were
killed by NATO bombs and how many were killed subsequently by prison guards
and other government forces. Nor is it known to what extent the Albanian
prisoners tried to escape or offered resistance. But the consistency of
witness testimony, with specific details about times and locations, leaves
no doubt that Serbian and possibly Yugoslav government forces deliberately
and without need killed a substantial number of ethnic Albanians in the
prison, probably more than seventy, and wounded many others. The Yugoslav
government claimed that NATO bombs killed ninety-five inmates and injured
196.6 NATO admitted to bombing the prison, but never acknowledged any related
civilian deaths.
The Prison
Located a few
miles east of Istok, near the border with Montenegro, Dubrava prison had
three pavilions with a capacity of more than 1,000 prisoners. The walled
facility contained a cultural center, sports hall, health center, and a
hotel for prisoners' visitors.
As with all of Kosovo's detention facilities, credible
reports of torture and abuse emanated from Dubrava prison throughout 1998
and early 1999. According to the OSCE, at least four male prisoners died
as a result of beatings sustained in Dubrava between October 1998 and March
1999. Defense lawyers reported restricted access to their clients in Dubrava,
and the Kosovo Verification Mission itself was never allowed access to
the prison.7
Former prisoners who were in Dubrava during the
war told Human Rights Watch that there were between 900 and 1,100 prisoners
in the prison when the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began on March 24, 1999,
including approximately thirty ethnic Serbs. Some prisoners were transferred
to Dubrava after the NATO bombing had begun. One former prisoner, R. T.,
transferred to Dubrava on April 30, said that approximately 165 ethnic
Albanians from Djakovica came to Dubrava a short time after he had arrived.8
This was confirmed during the April-May 2000 trial in Nis, Serbia, of 143
Albanians arrested in Djakovica in May 1999, who testified that they had
been transfered from Djakovica to prisons in Pec, Lipljan, and Dubrava.9
Another former prisoner, Bajrush Xhemaili, was transferred to Dubrava from
Nis prison on April 29.10
Among the ethnic Albanians in Dubrava was one of
Kosovo's most prominent political prisoners, Ukshin Hoti, who was finishing
the last year of a five-year sentence.11 Three witnesses said that Hoti
was released from Dubrava on May 16 because his sentence had expired. His
current whereabouts, however, are unknown, and many former prisoners and
human rights activists fear that he is dead.
The prison authorities claimed that many of the
ethnic Albanian prisoners in Dubrava were KLA members, including at least
eleven commanders.12 In November 1999, Human Rights Watch interviewed two
ethnic Albanian men who had been in Dubrava during the NATO bombing, and
both of them admitted to having been in the KLA, but it is not known whether
the government's claim holds true for other prisoners.
One of the former prisoners who spoke with Human
Rights Watch, A. K. (initials changed),13 said there were approximately
1,100 prisoners in Dubrava by March 1999. While the treatment in Dubrava
was generally acceptable before then, he said, the prison guards beat the
prisoners every day once the NATO bombing began.14
A.K.'s testimony about events in the prison is highly
consistent with Human Rights Watch's other interviewee from Dubrava, B.K.
(initials changed), who, like A.K., was serving a one-year sentence for
"terrorist activities against the state."15 As stated above, these two
testimonies match interviews with four other former prisoners that were
published in the Serbian, Albanian, or English-language press to paint
a consistent picture of the events in the prison between May 19 and May
25.
The NATO Bombing
According to
all of the witnesses, as well as Yugoslav government and NATO sources,
NATO aircraft first bombed Dubrava prison without warning on the morning
of May 19. B.K., who was being held in Pavilion C, told Human Rights Watch
that four bombs hit the prison, two striking Pavilion C, one an adjacent
pavilion, and antoher the prison director's building. He said:
When the rockets fell, we called on the guards to
open the doors but they left. When we saw that they had run, we started
to break down the doors. It took us about one and a half hours to break
them down. In my pavilion, three people died and fifteen others were wounded.
The Serbs sent three of the wounded to Pec. We went outside into a courtyard
within the prison. They came and took the bodies two hours later.16
A.K. claimed that four or five prisoners were killed
in Pavilions B and C, and some others were hit by shrapnel when running
into the prison field. Both former prisoners, interviewed separately, said
that, once gathered in the courtyard, the prisoners tried to contact the
NATO jets flying overhead by spelling out the word "HELP" with long florescent
light bulbs.
In Brussels, NATO spokesmen acknowledged the bombing
and said Dubrava was an "army facility." At a press conference on May 20,
Major General Walter Jertz explained:
It [Dubrava] is a militarily significant target,
we know it is a military security complex and this target has been attacked
because it was a legitimate military target and we have no evidence that
any weapons did go someplace else or the crew was wrong. I can add that
we used precision-guided munition and, to sum it up, it was a military
security complex, a military legitimate _target.17
According to the Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
NATO bombed Yugoslav Army and Serbian police forces near the prison at
1:15 p.m. on May 19, killing three civilians. Three weapons also reportedly
hit the penitentiary, killing two prisoners and a guard.18
A.K. and B.K., as well as the four other former
prisoners whose interviews were published in the press, all said that the
prisoners spent the next two nights sleeping outside, but within the walls
of the prison. Then, on May 21, prison guards ordered the prisoners to
line up in the courtyard. As they were gathering, however, a second wave
of NATO bombing began. B.K. told Human Rights Watch:
On May 21, they lined us up again in the courtyard.
We were surrounded by the structures of the prison. The guards did not
shoot at us. We were sitting in the grass, all of us-about 900 people.
They said, "don't be afraid, NATO won't fire." Around 10 or 11 a.m. the
planes started flying. The first rocket fell on the kitchen. Others fell
nearby. One of them fell inside the walls near us. Sixteen people were
killed when a chunk of land five meters wide blew apart near us. They included:
Fadil Bezeraj from Rasic, Naim Kurmehaj from Srellc e Eperme, Ali Kelmendi
from Kosoriq, Qaush Ahmeti from Shereme-taj, and Mete Osmajaj from Isniq.
Three times they [NATO] bombed. When it began, we
just lay there all day. When the guards heard the planes, they left the
prison. We stayed in the courtyard until about 12:00 p.m., then we retreated
to places in the yard about 300 meters away where there were fewer buildings.
. . . Around 2:00 p.m., some four armed guards came near. We thought they
came to shoot us, but the planes roared overhead and they ran away. We
slept in the field that night. . .19
The May 21 bombing of Dubrava was confirmed by western
journalists who had been escorted to the prison by Serbian authorities
on the same day, ostensibly to see the damage from NATO's May 19 bombing.
Jacky Rowland, a correspondent for the BBC, saw some of the corpses from
the May 19 bombing before having to flee the prison as NATO continued its
raid. She wrote in Scotland on Sunday:
We walked across the grass, stepping between the
bodies covered by blankets. One man was still alive, his blood-spattered
body shaking convulsively. Then we heard the drone of planes overhead:
the bombers were returning. It was time to leave. As we sped down the dirt
track away from the prison, the bombs fell. Three of them in close succession.20
Paul Watson from the Los
Angeles Times, who spent most of the war inside
Kosovo, was also in Dubrava that day. "At least nine bodies lay scattered
on the grass and in shrubs," he wrote. "All had shaved heads, indicating
they were inmates." He wrote further:
During two previous hours of morning attacks [on
May 21] ending at 10:20 a.m., two blasts breached the high outer wall and
left large craters on either side. Angry Yugoslav guards, who were trying
to keep inmates locked in the yard while coming under attack, said they
thought the North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes were attempting
to spring scores of KLA fighters from jail.21
Watson quoted a man he identified as the prison
warden, Aleksander Rakocevic, as saying: "The prisoners are still inside
the walls but we cannot put them back into the cellblocks where they're
supposed to be because NATO is hitting the buildings as well. . . . Maybe
some have already escaped because there are several holes in the walls."22
An Associated Press article did not provide a first-hand
account of the May 21 bombing, but asserted that reporters "saw seven bloodied
corpses covered by blankets in the jail's grassy courtyard, as well as
shrapnel-pocked buildings, and nervous-looking guards with automatic weapons
keeping prisoners at bay."23
As with the previous attack on Dubrava, NATO acknowledged
bombing the prison, and claimed that it was a legitimate military target.
In a morning briefing on May 22, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said:
As you know already, in Istok, Kosovo, NATO forces
attacked a barracks and an assembly area that has been in use for a long
time by both the Yugoslav Army and the MUP special police forces as part
of their operations against the KLA and also against Kosovar civilians,
and this military facility abuts a prison, but I want to stress, as I did
yesterday, that it is a military facility, the prison is part of this but
it is only a small part of what is quite a major military facility.24
The international journalists who visited Dubrava
on May 21 did not see any military activity in the area, although this
does not prove that military troops and equipment were not near the prison
when the bombing occurred. Paul Watson wrote that the press, "found no
evidence of military vehicles or equipment amid the rubble, although it
was difficult to confirm what might have been at the site during the earlier
attacks."25
Some of the former prisoners claim that they saw
anti-aircraft fire coming from near the prison during the NATO bombing.
According to an article in the Serbian-language
Beta News Agency, former prisoner Bajrush Xhemaili
claimed to have seen "constant provocation from a strong anti-aircraft
base set up near the prison."26 Ahmet Ahmeti, who gave an interview to
the Serbian- language daily newspaper Danas,
said that an air defense system was near the prison.27
The Yugoslav government claimed that the second
round of NATO bombing had caused further civilian casualties. On May 21,
the state news agency Tanjug
reported that at least nineteen prisoners had been killed and ten wounded
in the May 21 attack, including the deputy warden, Nedzmedin Kalicanaj,
aged forty-one. This was in addition, the report said, to the two prisoners
who had been killed in the May 19 bombing.28 The next day, Tanjug reported
that nineteen prisoners and guards had been killed and more than ten were
wounded.29 Another Tanjug report that same day claimed that, "dozens of
inmates and guards" had been killed.30
The Massacre
The day after
the second round of bombing, May 22, according to all of the witness testimony
available, the prison guards ordered all of the inmates to assemble in
the prison's main courtyard. B.K. explains what happened next:
In the morning, 5:40 a.m., May 22, we heard a megaphone
from the guard tower. Some commander said, "Get in a line because we want
to move you to Ni_ for your own security." They put us in a line. Around
6:10 a.m., they said we have ten minutes to get in a line. The line was
not clean, but had four to six people in a line, about 200 meters long.
After a few seconds, we were twenty to twenty-five meters from the walls,
they threw some three or four hand grenades. At the same time, they began
shooting with RPGs [rocket propelled grenades], and snipers [sniper rifles].
Whoever could manage just fell to the ground.31
A.K. told a similar story:
We were made to stand in a line on a cement football
field surrounded by guard towers. About 100 people were in one line. We
stood there about ten minutes until we were all in a line. Then a guy named
"Ace" climbed up one of the towers and gave the order to shoot. We saw
that. It was something like twenty minutes of constant shooting from the
five meter-high walls-it was all prepared. They had hand-held RPGs, sniper
rifles, machine guns, AK47s, hand grenades, and mortars. They were shooting
from the walls. The bombs fell on everyone and people were flying.32
In the Beta News
Agency interview, Bajrush Xhemaili33 explained
his version of the May 22 attack: "The Serbian forces opened fire from
the watchtowers on the northern and western parts of the prison walls.
They used sniper rifles, automatic weapons, and portable grenade launchers.
The shooting lasted about thirty minutes."34
Chaos ensued as prisoners ran for cover in the various
buildings of the prison, their basements, or the prison's sewer system.
B.K. said:
Me and a group who was closer to the wall, heard
them reloading. I screamed "Get up and run!" Whoever wanted to, or could,
started to run. We went into the basements, into manholes, into the pavilions,
and behind mounds. They continued shooting. From all the towers there was
sniper and automatic rifle fire. It lasted ten to fifteen minutes.
We went back to the field in the middle of the buildings
to try and get the wounded. After one hour, we went to check who had died.
They were still there but they didn't shoot. We counted approximately ninety-seven
dead. Among them were: Sahit Ibrahimi from Kotradic, Agim Elshani from
Klina, Zahir Agushi, Iber Gergoci, and Zeke Hasan Metaj from Strellc. We
collected the dead and covered them with blankets. Those we knew, we wrote
their names on paper which we stuck somewhere in their clothes. Then we
organized some food for ourselves. We broke into the medical clinic for
supplies.35
A.K. explained:
People were running. Since the prison is so big,
there are many sewers. We opened a grate and five to ten of us jumped in.
. . . We went into the destroyed buildings and took things to defend ourselves.
Since NATO hit the kitchen, there was food, so we cooked for ourselves.36
That evening, all of the witnesses say, a group
of special police or paramilitaries entered the prison and tried to reassert
control. The assault lasted approximately twenty minutes, during which
time hand grenades were thrown into the school building, allegedly killing
at least two people. The prisoners remained hidden during the night, some
of them preparing to defend themselves with makeshift weapons made from
broken furniture or garden tools.37 B.K. said:
Around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m., some paramilitaries entered
the prison. They demolished the prison school. That night they killed everyone
who was hiding in the sewers. Three or six, up to twelve people were in
there. They opened up the manholes and shot them.
I was in Pavilion C. Others were in the kitchen
basement. We organized ourselves for the night so they could not come and
kill us. We took shovels, sticks, whatever we could, even furniture legs.
We prepared some traps and I filled two big canisters with water. We had
the wounded in the Pavilion C basement. There were about 120 or 150 of
them.
That night, one person, twenty-five-years-old, hung
himself with a rope. Another was found hanging in the school. On May 23,
around 5:00 a.m., they began shooting and bombing. From the twenty-two
people hiding in the cultural center, they killed nine people, one by one.
Zef Keqiraj from Zhub-his brother saw this. Kabeshi from Zahaq was killed
too.
A.K. explained what happened the next morning, around
6:00 a.m., when another group of special forces entered the prison. He
told Human Rights Watch:
We were hiding in the basements and small rooms,
and we didn't know if they wanted to kill us or take us away. I saw "Grga,"
"Mladja," and some others from Pec. When they caught us, they grabbed us
by the hair and hit people in the head.
I was behind a heating pipe in the basement with
eighteen others. We were hiding. The fiberglass around the pipes was scratching
us. Some twenty-eight others came but they couldn't get in because there
was no room. Then the forces saw us and surrounded us. I saw them come
with machine guns and big knives and they hit the twenty-eight guys in
the basement. People's organs were spilling out everywhere. They stabbed
people. At that spot, all of the twenty-eight people were killed, including:
Zef Kqira, Lush Prelazi, Nikolle Bibaj, Jonus Krasniqi, and Arsim Krasniqi.
Naser Husaj, a prisoner in Dubrava who relayed his
story to the New York Times,
said that he spent the night hiding with a group of other prisoners in
a laundry room beneath the cafeteria. The police attacked the building
in the morning, he said, "with rocket-propelled grenades and shot through
the windows straight into the basement."38 Visiting the spot with Husaj
on December 7, the Times
journalist, Carlotta Gall, noticed the "overpowering" stench of death.
She wrote:
The green linoleum floor is still sticky with blood,
which has been smeared around in an attempt to clean it. Mr. Husaj moved
quickly in the dark, showing a familiarity with the underground rooms.
But even he gagged as he showed where he saw six people gunned down in
one corridor.39
Another prisoner, Remzi Tetrica, told his story
to the Kosova daily newspaper Kosova
Sot. About the morning attack on May 23, he
said:
On May 23, in the early hours, a massacre was carried
out by the paramilitaries. We were again attacked by the same arsenal of
weapons, just like the day before. They killed many prisoners in cellars,
shafts, and in rooms, where they would be caught. They also wounded many
other prisoners. I was wounded by the bombs as well. That same day, Xhemail
Alimani was killed. . . . I personally know about 108 killed and ninety-eight
wounded prisoners.40
Later in the morning, the security forces had reasserted
some control over the prison, and they issued an ultimatum for the prisoners
to emerge from their hiding places within fifteen minutes. With no other
options, the prisoners revealed themselves, and were then gathered in the
prison's sports hall, which was still undamaged. According to the witnesses,
VJ soldiers were present this time, and they were more friendly to the
surviving prisoners, even giving them cigarettes in the name of "Miki"-a
man two of the interviewees identified as the prison warden, although they
didn't know his full name. According to A.K., he recognized a policeman
from Pec nicknamed "Bata."
The injured were taken away in trucks, while the
remaining prisoners were transported in approximately ten buses to Lipljan
prison in south-central Kosovo. All of the former prisoners claimed to
have been beaten in Lipljan. A.K. and Bajrush Xhemaili, claimed that the
new arrivals had to walk through two cordons of police wielding batons
and metal sticks, who beat the prisoners as they passed.41
On the morning of June 10, just after NATO and the
Yugoslav Army signed the Military Technical Agreement that ended the war,
all of the ethnic Albanian prisoners in Lipljan were transferred to other
prisons inside Serbia proper, such as Sremska Mitrovica, Nis, Prokuplje,
or Pozarevac. According to the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Center,
in October 1999, wounded prisoners from Dubrava were being held in the
prisons at Sremska Mitrovica, Zabela and Nis.42
Human Rights Watch interviewed three other prisoners
who had been in Lipljan prison at this time, in addition to the two men
who were in Dubrava, about the transfer. All of the men said that the inmates
had their hands tied and were then transferred in buses out of Kosovo.
B.K. said:
On June 9, at 10:00 p.m., they woke us up. They
tied us with ropes and put us in groups of fifty. We could not sit. They
started withdrawing and shooting in the air. We were afraid they would
kill us there. At 6:00 a.m., June 10, they held us until 12:00 p.m. without
food or water. Then they put us onto buses with our heads down. Half of
us were on the floor. It was cold. They beat those who moved. There were
two policemen and a driver in each bus. We realized that the army and police
were withdrawing from Kosovo. We got to Nis, where we stayed one hour in
the bus. They untied us and put us in the prison.43
Other prisoners stopped at Nis prison, but were
then moved on. B. Z., an eighteen year-old who was not a prisoner from
Dubrava, told Human Rights Watch:
On June 10 we were transferred out. First they said
we would go to Nis. But they said there was no room there, so we changed
buses and went on. From Lipljan, I was in the first bus with my hands tied
behind my back. The bus was full. They took us to Sremska Mitrovica. We
were about 300 people.44
All of the former prisoners interviewed by Human
Rights Watch had been released between September and December 1999, usually
because their prison terms had expired. But, as of April 2001, at least
70 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo remained in Serbian prisons, among them
some survivors of the Dubrava massacre (see section on Kosovar Albanian
Prisoners in Serbia Since War's End in Abuses After June 12, 1999).
The precise number of Dubrava inmates killed by
the two NATO bombing raids and by prison guards and special police remains
unclear. After initially reporting on May 21 that at least nineteen inmates
had been killed, the Yugoslav government's figures rose sharply four days
later, without, however, attributing killings to measures to control rioting
or escaping priosiners. Serbian authorities, in contrast, attributed the
new deaths to the bombings in stark contradiction to survivor testimonies.
A May 25, 1999, Tanjug report said that "in days-long bombardment of the
Penitentiary Institute Istok, some 100 prisoners died, and some 200 were
wounded."45 On May 27, Tanjug quoted Vladan Bojic, investigative judge
in the Pec district court, as saying that ninety-six corpses had been pulled
from the ruins and that forty wounded were in critical condition.46 On
May 29, the Yugoslav government stated that "the number of casualties in
the Correctional Institution in Istok is increasing. Out of 196 people
wounded in the vandal bombing of this institution another three persons
died, and seven more were taken out from under the rubble, while the search
for the dead continues."47 On May 30, Tanjug reported that seven more bodies
had been found, bringing the death total to ninety-three.48 The final Yugoslav
government figures were published in a July report by the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs called "NATO Crimes in Yugoslavia: Documentary Evidence, 25 April-10
June 1999." NATO bombs had killed ninety-five inmates and injured 196,
the report said.49
Ostensibly to help make its case that all of the
prisoners had been killed by NATO bombs, the Serbian authorities again
escorted a group of foreign journalists to Dubrava prison on May 24. Reporting
for the BBC, Jacky Rowland said that the prison had clearly been struck
again since the journalists' first visit on May 21. "One building was smouldering
while the dining hall and several cell blocks were badly damaged," she
reported.50 However, it was less clear to Rowland how the victims in the
prison had died:
Walking around the prison we counted forty-four
bodies, about half of these appeared to be the victims of the first bombing
raid on Friday [May 19], still lying under blankets on the grass. Then
we were taken to a room in a damaged cell block where there were twenty-five
corpses. The men appeared to be ethnic Albanians, some of them had shaved
heads, others had longer hair. A couple of the corpses had their trousers
pulled down around their knees. We were told they had died between Friday
and Sunday although it was not clear how all of them had met their deaths,
nor why they were all in one relatively undamaged room.
Another reporter who visited the prison on May 24,
Daniel Williams with the Washington Post,
also questioned the government's version of the deaths:
This time, the official version-that bombs again
were to blame-did not match what reporters saw at the scene, where twenty-five
more ethnic Albanian corpses were on display. The corpses were piled in
the foyer of a clinic. Except for a ruined dining hall, however, no new
bomb damage was visible inside the prison, and none of the newly dead had
been crushed, or touched by the concrete dust that covered the dining hall
floor.51
Williams visited Dubrava again on June 12, after
NATO troops had entered Kosovo. He wrote:
Once inside, it didn't take long to see that ugly
things had happened-things that had nothing to do with bombing. At the
clinic where the twenty-five bodies had lain, mattresses and pillows lined
a hallway I had not been able to see before. Some had bullet holes and
dried blood where heads might have rested. Bullet holes and splattered
blood marked walls. A copy of the Hippocratic oath hung at an angle in
one office.
In a cellblock, bullet holes marred inner walls
and more mattresses bore dried bloodstains. At the rear of the compound,
piles of clothing filled a cowshed. Again, walls bore bullet pockmarks.
Mattresses and clothing were stuffed into open manholes.52
Visiting the prison in early November with former
prisoner Naser Husaj, Carlotta Gall from the New
York Times saw evidence that suggested many
people were killed inside the prison's buildings and basements. She wrote:
And in the basements of the buildings, the blood
lies still sticky on the floor, bullet holes scar the walls, and impact
marks of grenade explosions crater the floors . . . In the basement of
the cultural center, under insulated heating pipes and industrial washing
machines, the weapons still lay around: a spade, metal spikes, wooden bars
and stretches of metal piping, wrapped with rags for a better grip. Pools
of dried blood still stained the floor, and discarded clothes. Two small
round craters from a hand grenade pockmarked the concrete floor.53
The Exhumations
On August 13,
a Spanish forensic team began exhuming ninety-seven graves that were found
outside the village of Rakos/Rakosh near Dubrava prison.54 A legal advisor
to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Karl
Koenig, claimed that the bodies appeared to have "been here since the 26th
or 27th of May." All of the graves were marked "KPD," which stands, in
Serbian, for Kazneno Popravni Dom, or Penal Correctional Facility. In her
November 10, 1999, report to the U.N. Security Council, ICTY chief prosecutor
Carla Del Ponte said that ninety-seven bodies had been found at the Rakos
site, although no details on the cause of death were provided.55
Perpetrators
Precisely who
was in charge during the killings in Dubrava prison remains unclear. Still,
from witness testimonies and press accounts, a few leads have emerged.
According to an article in the Washington
Post, then-Serbian Justice Minister Dragoljub
Jankovic, claimed that "his people" were not in charge in Dubrava between
May 19 and 25, meaning, ostensibly, the Serbian Ministry of Justice. The
article said that, "He [Jankovic] does not know what happened during the
bombardment, and seemed to suggest that if any atrocities occurred, it
was others-special police, paramilitaries-who were responsible."56
Journalist Paul Watson, who visited Dubrava on May
19 and May 21, quoted one official from the prison-Aleksander Rakocevic-whom
he identified as a warden.57 Former prisoners told Human Rights Watch that
they recognized a few of the Serbian security personnel in the prison,
although they did not know their full names. Both of the former prisoners
who spoke with Human Rights Watch said that the director of the prison
was known as "Miki"-a dark-skinned man who spoke perfect Albanian. According
to A.K., the deputy director was known as "Ace," and he was the one who
allegedly gave the order to fire on the assembled prisoners on May 22.
A.K. and B.K. both also claimed that the prison guards had released and
armed some of the ethnic Serbian prisoners after the first NATO raid on
May 19. Both witnesses said they saw some of these people back in the prison
attacking
the Albanians with whom they had, until recently, been incarcerated.
Lastly, the Kosovo Liberation Army has claimed to
possess further information about the Dubrava killings. In an interview
with Human Rights Watch, KLA spokeswoman Faton Mexhmeti Ramusij said that
the KLA possesses Serbian police documents that portray all the deaths
in Dubrava as having been the result of NATO bombing. The names of four
policemen who allegedly compiled the report were provided to Human Rights
Watch, although the original document was not seen.58
1 UNHCR GIS Unit, Pristina, Kosovo,
"UNHCR Shelter Verification: Agency Coverage," November 9, 1999.
2 OSCE/ODIHR,
Kosovo/Kosova: As Seen, As Told, Part I, pp
208-210.
3 M.Manic and S. Kovacevic, "Will
and Readiness to Carry Out All Security Tasks," Policajac,
No. 18/98, October 1998.
4 By mid-2000, many more Dubrava
survivors had been released. In September, seventy-nine of them held a
hunger strike in front of Dubrava prison to highlight the plight of the
Albanian prisoners still in Serbian custody.
5 See interviews with Ahmet Ahmeti
(Izabela Kisic, "Tukli su nas, mucili elektrosokovima i pucli," Danas,
November 5, 1999); Bajrush Xhemaili ("Former Kosovar Prisoner Says Serbs
`Massacred' Over 100 Inmates," BBC Worldwide Monitoring of
Beta News Agency, August 26, 1999); and Remzi
Tetrica ("We Were Attacked With Automatic Weapons, Snipers and Bombs in
Dubrava Prison," Kosova Sot,
September 30, 1999); and information from Naser Husaj (Carlotta Gall, "Stench
of Horror Lingers in a Prison in Kosovo," New
York Times, November 8, 1999.)
6 "NATO Crimes in Yugoslavia: Documentary
Evidence, 25 April-10 June 1999," Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Belgrade, July 1999, p. 319.
7 OSCE/ODIHR, Kosovo/Kosova:
As Seen, As Told, Part I, pp. 213-214.
8 "We Were Attacked With Automatic
Weapons, Snipers and Bombs in Dubrava Prison," Kosova
Sot, September 30, 1999.
9 "Report on the Trial of the So-called
`Djakovica Group'," Group 484, Volunteer Center for Direct Human Rights,
April 2000.
10 "Former Kosovar Prisoner Says
Serbs `Massacred' Over 100 Inmates," BBC Worldwide Monitoring.
11 Hoti (age fifty-six), head of
the Party of National Unity (Unikomb), was arrested on May 14, 1993, and
subsequently sentenced to five years in prison.
12 Paul Watson, "NATO Bombs Ignite
Prison Chaos-KLA Officers Reported to be Among Inmates," Toronto
Star, May 22, 1999.
13 A.K. was arrested in Pec in August
1998, and sentenced in November 1998 to one year in prison for "terrorist
acts." Human Rights Watch inspected A.K.'s verdict from the Pec district
court, signed by Judge Goran Petronijevic, but the document number and
precise court dates are not provided here to protect the identity of the
witness. A.K. told Human Rights Watch that he had joined the KLA in June
1998, and had fought in Glodjane under Ramush Haradinaj, the KLA's regional
commander in the area.
14 Human Rights Watch interview with
A.K., Pec, Kosovo, November 17, 1999.
15 B.K. was arrested in September
1998 and sentenced to one year in prison that March 1999 for terrorist
activities. He admitted to Human Rights Watch to having been a KLA battalion
commander. The precise dates of his arrest and sentencing are not provided
to protect the identity of the witness.
16 Human Rights Watch interview with
B.K., near Pec, Kosovo, November 17, 1999.
17 NATO press conference, NATO Headquarters,
Brussels, May 20, 1999.
18 Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
NATO Raids on Manufacturing and Civilian Facilities on May 19 and in the
Night Between May 19 and 20, 1999.
19 Ibid.
20 Jacky Rowland, "Bombs, Blood and
Dark Despair," Scotland on Sunday,
May 23, 1999.
21 Paul Watson, "Dispatch from Kosovo:
20 Killed, 10 Wounded as NATO Targets Prison," Los
Angeles Times, May 22, 1999.
22 Ibid.
23 "NATO Hits Kosovo Jail Again Friday
Night," Associated Press,
May 21, 1999.
24 NATO Morning Briefing, NATO Headquarters,
Brussels, May 22, 1999.
25 Watson, "NATO Bombs Ignite Prison
Chaos."
26 "Former Kosovar Prisoner Says
Serbs `Massacred' Over 100 Inmates," BBC Worldwide Monitoring.
27 Izabela Kisic, "Tukli su nas,
mucili elektrosokovima I pucli," Danas,
November 5, 1999.
28 "At Least 19 Killed in NATO Bombardment
of Prison In Istok," Tanjug, May 21, 1999.
29 "NATO Aircraft Attack Prison In
Istok Six Times in One Day," Tanjug, May 22, 1999.
30 "Dozens of Inmates Killed in NATO
Air Strikes on Istok Prison," Tanjug, May 22, 1999.
31 Human Rights Watch interview with
B.K., near Pec, Kosovo, November 17, 1999.
32 Human Rights Watch interview with
A.K., Pec, November 17, 1999.
33 Bajrush Xhemaili was head of the
Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedom's sub-council in Urosevac/Ferizaj,
as well as a member of the council's presidency in Pristina. He was arrested
in 1993 and sentenced on August 5, 1993, to eight years in prison. He was
released on June 8, 1999, and is currently active in the Party for Democratic
Prosperity, the new political party headed by Hashim Thaci, former political
director of the KLA and current prime minister of Kosovo's self-appointed
Provisional Government.
34 "Former Kosovar Prisoner Says
Serbs `Massacred' Over 100 Inmates," BBC Worldwide Monitoring of
Beta News Agency, August 26, 1999.
35 Human Rights Watch interview with
B.K., near Pec, Kosovo, November 17, 1999.
36 Human Rights Watch interview with
A.K., Pec, November 17, 1999.
37 A New
York Times reporter, Carlotta Gall, who visited
Dubrava prison on November 7, 1999, saw weapons in the basement of the
cultural center, including a spade, metal spikes, wooden bars and metal
piping. ["Stench of Horror Lingers in a Prison in Kosovo," by Carlotta
Gall, The New York Times,
November 8, 1999.]
38 Gall, "Stench of Horror Lingers
in a Prison in Kosovo."
39 Ibid.
40 "We Were Attacked with Automatic
Weapons, Snipers and Bombs in Dubrava Prison,"
Kosova Sot, September 30, 1999.
41 Human Rights Watch interviewed
another former prisoner who was in Lipljan prison from May 24 to June 9
but was not in Dubrava who also reported having to walk through a cordon
of policemen. Human Rights Watch interview with R.M., Glogovac, Kosovo,
November 5, 1999.
42 Humanitarian Law Center Communique,
October 10, 1999.
43 Human Rights Watch interview with
A.K., near Pec, Kosovo, November 17, 1999.
44 Human Rigths Watch interview with
B. Z., Glogovac, Kosovo, November 5, 1999.
45 "Number of Persons Killed in NATO
raids on Istok prison Still Uncertain," Tanjug, May 25, 1999.
46 On May 24, Vladan Bojic was quoted
on the state-run Belgrade Radio as saying that NATO had "committed the
biggest mass murder of inmates in the history of modern civiliazation,"
and that the court would begin to investigate the crime.
47 FRY MFA, NATO Raids on Manufacturing
and Civilian Facilities on May 29th and in the Night Between May 29th and
30th 1999.
48 Yugoslav press reports; "Identifikovano
86 mrtvih," DAN,
27 May 1999, p. 2; "Jos sedam leseva," DAN,
30 May 1999.
49 "NATO Crimes in Yugoslavia: Documentary
Evidence, 25 April-10 June 1999," p. 319, Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Belgrade, July 1999.
50 "Istok Prison's Unanswered Questions,"
BBC World News, May 25, 1999.
51 Daniel Williams, "Kosovo Revisited;
At War's End, Old Places Seen in New Light," Washington
Post, June 26, 1999.
52 Ibid.
53 Gall, "Stench of Horror Lingers
in a Prison in Kosovo."
54 "Spanish Teams Excavating Mass
Burial Site," Associated Press, August 13, 1999.
55 Remarks to the Security Council
by Madame Carla Del Ponte, Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia, New York, November 10, 1999.
56 William Booth, "Doctor Tells of
Life Among Serbia's Captives," Washington
Post, July 19, 1999.
57 Paul Watson, "NATO Bombs Ignite
Prison Chaos-KLA Officers Reported to be Among Inmates," Toronto
Star, May 22, 1999.
58 Human Rights Watch interview with
Faton Mexhmeti Ramusij, Babaloc (Baballoq), July 17, 1999.
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