The following is a transcript of a broadcast produced by Antonela Riha for Radio B2-92 and distributed throug the ANEM-Network to all member stations. On Radio B2-92 it was broadcast on Friday, March 3, 2000. KOSOVO

• Introduction

• talk with Adem Demaqi, former political representative of the Kosovo Liberation Army

• talk with Veton Surroi, proprietor of Pristina daily Koha Ditore

• talk with Nekibe Kelymendi, Secretary General of the Democratic League of Kosovo LDK

Introduction: The next hour will be dedicated to the situation in Kosovo and we're going to hear Kosovo Albanians talk about it. They include the former political representative of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the proprietor of Pristina daily Koha Ditore, Veton Surroi and Nekibe Kelymendi, whose husband, the respected Pristina lawyer Bairam Kelymendi, and sons Kastriot and Kushtrim were killed at the very beginning of the bombing.

You need a passport to enter Kosovo, even if you're coming from Serbia. You present it at the border, which is guarded by KFOR. It's safest to travel escorted by them. On the road to Pristina you can see Albanian houses being rebuilt and Serb houses charred and desolate. Crime is the subject everyone talks about. You can't find an Albanian family which hasn't had a member killed or which hasn't had a traumatic experience during the bombing. I spoke to urban Albanians who speak cynically about the KLA heroes who took over power, but much more about business. There's a lot of talk about smuggling, crime, internal showdowns among former KLA groups which make the citizens of Pristina feel insecure. I met many people who cheered when the Boro i Ramiz sports centre burnt down because millions of Deutschmarks belonging to new businessmen burnt with it. They hold UNMIK, the United Nations civilian mission, responsible for the anarchy: so far they haven't even succeeded in regulating Pristina's traffic chaos. The first advice from everyone is not to speak Serbian in the street and to avoid certain places where former Albanian fighters gather. It's a good idea to speak English, but waiters will usually ask a question or two in Serbia just to check out where you really come from. KFOR and UN police patrol the streets constantly, giving you only a partial sense of security. Every encounter with a Kosovo Protection Corps uniform causes a feeling of unease, to put it mildly, among Belgraders. The Albanian flags on every corner and the patriotic music blaring from street stalls quickly convince you that the stories of how we managed to defend Kosovo and defeat NATO were mere state propaganda. The first thing a journalist receives in the KFOR press centre is an identification card issued by NATO. In Pristina you neither see nor hear a single Serb. Those who feel most secure are the ones who have rented a room to a foreigner and feel that this protects them. Many are waiting to sell their belongings and leave. The Albanians I met and spoke to condemned crimes against their non-Albanian fellow citizens.

talk with Adem Demaqi, former political representative of the Kosovo Liberation Army

The first to condemn violence against Serbs and other non-Albanians after KFOR's arrival was the KLA's former political representative, Adem Demaqi. He now heads a non-government organisation which, he says, deals with the freedom of thought and action and, about the position of Kosovo Serbs he says:

DEMAQI: The fact that Serbs live in fear is somewhat justifiable because, unfortunately, the Serb regime, just like any regime, was able to involve a large number of Serbs in crimes whether they wanted it or not. They gave them weapons, gave them uniforms, mobilised them, made them go up and down and the people were, pretty unwillingly, forced to do pretty miserable things to Albanians. Of course people don't know who did these things and who did not and everyone is afraid. The Serbs are also afraid but none of them dares, and I understand them, to say "I didn't do it; so and so did it". Instead, they are all silent, they are all afraid to speak, because there's a false hope that Sloba will eventually return or that somebody else will eventually come. However, while we have so many people in Serbian prisons – we have about 7,000 mission people – the Serb regime admits to having only 2,000 in prisons, so the fate of 5,000 people is obvious. Until their fate is cleared up I don't think Serbs will be able to move freely here without being afraid for their lives and property because a lot of people were treated that way and there are a lot of people watching closely for someone speaking Serbian. They provoke you, asking "What's the time?", "Do you have a watch?" just to see whether or not you speak Albanian. This is the way a lot of innocent people have been killed in the cities.

You mentioned Albanians in prisons. Yesterday I was here in Pristina and I heard on Deutsche Welle that there were camps for Serbs in Kosovo. Do you know anything about that?

DEMAQI: There are no camps, there's o such thing. Kosovo is to small for someone to have private prisons and nobody to know anything about it. It's not possible for just anyone to run a private prison, you have to take care of prisoners, you have to feed them, it's impossible. The KLA has been disarmed, transformed into a force which can help in disasters and so on, there's no more than that, these are only words. The Serb regime always finds a way to interfere in these things, to light the fire and keep it burning, through the people it holds in prisons and through commandos acting in Kosovo and in Mitrovica.

But I heard here in Pristina that there are secret police, various crime groups controlling the situation. You can no longer blame only the Serbian regime for what's happening here.

DEMAQI: I think that in this situation, in this muddied water, certainly potential and established criminals find a way to operate because it suits them better when there are no organised police, administration and so on and, considering the situation and the anarchy, if you can call it that, it's a miracle there aren't more of them or more crime. I think it's exaggerated. Although I often say that Albanians can no longer make excuses because of Serbs, they have to start behaving better, restraining themselves, because Albanians, as the majority here, now have great responsibility and they must accept that responsibility in the spirit of our traditional courage and dignity and be merciful.

I'm sure a lot of people listening to you are going to be bitter because you were the political representative of the KLA which, for the Serb people here, represented the enemy and was proclaimed a terrorist organisation. I'm sure many people will be bitter when they year you advocating pacifist ideas and I'm not sure you will be correctly understood.

DEMAQI: I'm sure you're right and I shan't be understood correctly because they have heavy consciences. It's a matter of conscience. However to say that you can't change conscience is the greatest mistake because this must be changed through example: the stronger must serve as an example, must give in to the other, must have an understanding for the other. This is why, while we were under Serb occupation, often said that I was on the side of the Albanians but, since we are free – although we're not completely free, let's say we breathe more freely – today I am on the side of the Serbs and Montenegrins and Romanies and Turks and Goranci and only after that on the side of the Albanians.

You say you're not free. What do you need to be free? There are no Serb police now and it was they who bothered you most, there's no longer the regime which provoked so many people to stand up and joint the KLA. What is it you want, a republic? What kind of freedom do you need?

DEMAQI: We want to define our position, define our status, and I think that the definition of that status will be helpful to Serbs as well as to Albanians. Everyone must understand that there can no longer be colonies in the Balkans and in Europe.

What do you see as the solution?

DEMAQI: The solution is that Kosovo must be free, an independent Kosovo. Then that independent Kosovo can negotiate with Serbia, with Montenegro. I'm returning to my idea of a Balkan confederation where we could create all the conditions for resolving the issue of minorities in Serbia and Montenegro and Serbia has their people here and in that way we could solve that issue elegantly and create conditions for passing the exam and joining integrated Europe because there is a trend now to gather around real interests, not false interests, and the real interests are open borders, the open circulation of ideas and capital and this is the only way we can prosper and progress economically, financially, culturally and so on. Serbia and the Serbian regime are giving the world arguments to change their position, to change their consciousness and their view and their approach to the complex Balkan problem and I am not much afraid of these resolutions. I believe they will soon understand – if not soon then eventually – they will have to understand it is impossible to preserve an impossible situation. It would be an unrealistic solution given the objective realities of our life today.

I'd like to return to something I've heard repeatedly in the few days I've been in Pristina – the disappointment of many Albanians in what's happened since the international troops arrived. Albanians who had expected to be, as you say, much freer than they are now are disappointed, among other things, in the Kosovo Protection Corps which in the end has been put in charge of disaster relief and is not behaving like an army now, the first activity of the former KLA members was shovelling snow.

DEMAQI: Anyone who saw things unrealistically is disappointed and dissatisfied. The Serb regime and a wrong evaluation have brought us to this situation but we also have to thank our foreign enemies who, for the first time in their history, acted adequately, the way the Serbs wanted it. That's why I say that the Albanians are not completely free, because they didn't win their freedom by themselves.

For the Serb public, at least, events during the period of bombing are still quite unclear. What was really happening in Kosovo? How did you spend that time?

DEMAQI: I was here with my sister all the time. We decided that if need be we would die here, we wouldn't leave Kosovo. There were large groups of masked Serb police going around the settlements, around the streets, around the city, not only Pristina, almost all towns, expelling people in convoys and then packing them on buses or trains and sending some of them towards Macedonia and some towards Albania. the time we spent here, the period after the murder of Bairam Kelymendi and two of his sons, people were in terror and people were fleeing with their families and all they had.

Did you have problems?

DEMAQI: They threatened me: "Why are you walking around, why are you going out?" I said "This is my town and I am going out". "The others are fleeing". "Let them flee, if all of them flee I'll be the only one here. I don't intend to flee". And once they stopped me in front of the police station and held me in there for an hour. The second time they arrested me on May 25, it was an army security service. They held me and an AFP correspondent and a Canadian correspondent for three hours. They threatened us, these were the guys who said "We'll skin you alive, we'll kill you," I said "Why are you insulting me, you're only discrediting yourself. God has given you the rifle, pull the trigger." "You killed two of my brothers". "All right, here, you have the opportunity to revenge your brothers, go on, you have me, I'm not running: I'm here". I was ready to die with a smile on my face.

How do you interpret the fact that nobody seriously threatened you in the end although you were the political representative of the KLA?

DEMAQI: They knew from February 26 last year that I was not the representative.

They could have assumed you were connected.

DEMAQI: They could have assumed that. They told me "Say Kosovo is Serbian". "I cannot say that when it is not Serbian". I said openly to them that Kosovo belonged to the Kosovars who lived there. "Well, what are you proposing?" they asked. "I say, accept what NATO is asking, put this to an end". "Ah, we're not going to capitulate". "All right, you won't capitulate, but I don't believe you can go against the whole world". I was open with them, I didn't hide things. "Do you know what you told Draskovic?" "I know what I told Draskovic". "Do you still stand by that?" "I do. Everything I told Draskovic, everything I have written, everything I have signed. I stand behind it, behind everything".

What did you tell Draskovic?

DEMAQI: It was on a program where Draskovic said "Kosovo will never be free". I said "Never say never in politics. Hitler also thought never, the Turks also thought never and five hundred years later we were free, so never say never". They wanted to say that I wasn't hiding my position, my point of view. They knew very well that I was challenging them in some way, but I suppose they thought that a dead Adem was even more dangerous to them because then even more Albanians would have a reason for revenge. So I was on my way to death, my sister as well, but God saved us and here I am now.

talk with Veton Surroi, proprietor of Pristina daily Koha Ditore

The Belgrade public first knew of Veton Surroi as a member of UJDI, then as a journalist and the initiator of many Kosovo Albanian civilian initiatives. For some time he led the Parliamentary Party of Kosovo and now, for years, he has been editor and proprietor of the Pristina daily Koha ditore. In the period before the bombing he was active in the Kosovo Albanian negotiating team. What is he doing now?

SURROI: I have no political engagement. While the negotiations lasted I agreed to take part in them because I considered it my civil duty. At the moment I have no other institutional engagement, nor did I then, but I'm trying to initiate a social debate in the civil society on all the important issues of Kosovo today. I have just had a meeting with Romany representatives and we're trying to find a way to move the Romany issue onto an institutional level and regulate in the current situation and, of course, in the future.

You were a member of the Transitional Council but I understand you have left it and no longer attend meetings. Is that true? And if so, why?

SURROI: It's true. I accepted, again as my civil duty, to be a representative, as we had been at Rambouillet, because the Transitional Council was, in some way, modelled according to Rambouillet, but I refused to continue participating in the Transitional Council for a number of reasons. One is that I thought the Council was irrelevant because it was turning into an institutional form without content; the other thing was that I thought I didn't have much in common with the people on the Council, we didn't have the same value system. The third thing was that I thought that the people from the Council had to advance their positions as party representatives within some administrative format so I suggested getting to something like the current situation when there is a joint administrative council.

When you say you were not close to some people on the Council, who did you mean in particular?

SURROI: I think there were very few with whom I shared a value system.

Then let's put it this way: which of them were you close to?

SURROI: You see, when the majority are not Kosovars, when I don't share a value system with the majority, I don't see any reason to take part.

Before we discuss certain value systems which exist here these days I must ask you a question which is of great interest to the Belgrade public and which takes us back several months to the time of the bombing which, it eventually emerged, you spent here in Pristina. Why didn't you leave, like most of your fellow citizens?

SURROI: I was close to being expelled but, by a stroke of fate, I wasn't there when the police arrived to arrest me or expel me. Because I had signed the document at Rambouillet I considered it my duty to stay with the people on whose behalf I had signed. I think that was a moral obligation and that's why I fulfilled it.

Were you afraid, especially when you found out that Mr Agani had been killed, and Kelymendi before him.

SURROI: One lived in fear, of course, there was a form of war hysteria and institutionalised extermination.

Did you receive any threats or were you in hiding, as people also said?

SURROI: I was very well hidden but, on several occasions I was quite close to encounters of the third kind, as they say, encounters with the paramilitary, police and army.

You again became important among the wider public, even outside Kosovo, after writing in Koha ditore a text which was critical of Albanian society, of what was happening after the bombing and unless I'm mistaken you said, among other things, that there were elements of fascism. Why did you take this position and what exactly did you mean?

SURROI: It was obvious that there was a situation approaching in which an organised group or groups were seeking the execution of Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo because of their ethnic or racial background and of course I used a metaphor which was painful but which was part of reality and it was that Albanians had been victims of this kind of policy by Milosevic for years and had even begun an uprising against such policy and that it was now absolutely amoral for part of Albanian society to be doing the same thing which Milosevic had been doing to Albanians. I think that this is a matter of principle, not a matter of love or brotherhood or unity or anything else, it's a question of principle.

Do you think that your readers understood you, people who in general, among other things, tolerate such a situation in Kosovo?

SURROI: Some did, some didn't. As for whether people tolerate it or not I have to say that, even if all Albanians had good will and a tolerant attitude there would still be a lot of problems for minorities because there is a large security vacuum and while you lack institutions you can't create a tolerant society so Albanians, or part of Albanian society are as much to blame as Serbs themselves because of these circumstances of history and because of the international community as well.

What, in your opinion, is the actual responsibility of the international community?

SURROI: If you have an institutional vacuum, if you have an administrative vacuum, if you have no functioning society, judiciary and so on, then you arrive at a situation where the society can be self-controlled and not controlled by a unique, democratic administrative procedure.

When we talk about the relationship between ethnic communities here, in Belgrade you often here the position of the Serbs and the Serb Community, the president of the Serb National council, and the way they see their problem here is that they are in danger and absolutely without protection. What do you think is needed in order to achieve some kind of cooperation between Serbs and Albanians, and even the international community as the third party? Are these solely institutions or is there something else which, for example, the local Serbs need to do.

SURROI: The institutions are a priority of course, but the Serbs themselves are also victims of Milosevic's longstanding policies. It had been obvious, even before that, when they found themselves in that kind of situation, as in Croatia or Bosnia, there had been manipulation with certain policies and then they identified themselves with that policy. This process of negation and identification demands time and it's problematic. The process is cathartic, the Serbian people need catharsis and that, of course, is not only a matter of local Serbs. This is one side of the paradox. The other side is that as much as the Serbs here need collective catharsis, they must also create a local identity; for the first time they must think not in the direction of how to regulate relations in Kosovo so that Kosovo remains in Serbia but how to regulate relations in Kosovo so that they remain in Kosovo, how to be part of the community, and this is a problem which needs time, the investment of political energy and, of course, nobody will help them except themselves. If Serbs here think they can find the answers in Belgrade, from whoever is in power, from whoever in the opposition, they are wrong. They are wrong because of themselves, not because of anything else, because nobody in Belgrade can provide answers for the situation in Kosovo, because nobody in Belgrade is going through this process in the way they are here.

Do you really think that Serbs can talk to somebody like Hashim Taqi, whom they considered their nemesis during the conflict between the security forces and the KLA? Do you think that the Albanian representatives are ready to offer Serbs any kind of existence together? So far this has not appeared to be the case.

SURROI: There must be an energy; those Albanian leaders can also say "Well, we haven't seen any kind of indication that Serbs want to live as part of the community". But if both Serbs and Albanians begin condemning each other, complaining that the other side isn't doing enough, they're going to avoid the problem and create a new one, a mutual condemnation instead of beginning a process in which they will say "Okay, the current situation is not especially brilliant for anybody, but we must think about the future – let's look ahead, what are the rights, what are the obligations, what are the interests that the majority can't understand, because the majority, by their very nature, are neglecting them. That process must begin.

What would you propose as a first step?

SURROI: The first step must come from one side or the other saying "Listen, let's put down on paper ten points, the things we think are the most important in our relations and then rationally enter negotiations," not dealing with when we will sit down, how we will sit down and so on.

Do you see anyone on the Albanian side who might propose that and implement it? There are a lot of statements about multiethnic Kosovo, democracy and so on but there doesn't seem to be anyone on the Albanian side who could implement that in practice.

SURROI: All right, we don't exactly have the most brilliant of leaders, quite the contrary, but then again, if you expect it from one side or the other you'll wait for ever.

But somebody must make the first move. You're the majority here now.

SURROI: Yes, but listen: I'm not a representative of the majority. If I'm part of the ethnic majority that doesn't mean I'm its representative. In some cases I can be a political minority, as I am in some cases.

Since the arrival of KFOR, it appears, at least from Belgrade, that many things have changed among Kosovo Albanians on the political scene. What's the current balance of power among Taqi, Rugova, and Qosja?

SURROI: The balance of power among them is absolutely irrelevant because the actual levers of power are not in their hands. That question will be relevant at the time of the elections; in the current situation it's not exactly relevant. This is a pre-political period and a rationalisation of politics will have to happen and this means that the parties will not be able to rely on leadership by personality but will have to work on their platforms.

Are you going to organise a party? Hashim Taqi has just announced that you will.

SURROI: No, it appears he had a slip of the tongue because somebody asked him how he would react if I founded a party and I think it was a slip of the tongue which spread very rapidly. But no, I don't have any such ambition.

I hear that you are organising and taking part in lectures across Kosovo, Djakovica and Mitrovica have been specifically mentioned. They say these lectures are very well attended. What are you telling these people?

SURROI: How I see Kosovo today and how I see the future of Kosovo as a democratic society. I'm going to these places on the initiative of local civil society organisations and I see this process as very important for me because it helps me understand my own thinking. And, secondly, I want to see what people think about the matters which interest me.

You're in contact with people, ordinary Albanian citizens who aren't politicians. What are the basic questions these people are asking? What are their basic problems?

SURROI: Their basic problems include everything, from safety to the development of the economy, to the status issue. You can put everything under the question of how to create security. How do we leave this period of insecurity and enter one of certainty and how do we do it all in the short period of time while there is this historic opportunity of including the international community in the solution of the problem.

In Belgrade we hear that there is great criminalisation of the society here, that there is complete anarchy. You mentioned the lack of institutions. How does that appear in everyday life? Does your paper, for example, write about it?

SURROI: Yes, of course we write about it.

What do you write?

SURROI: We write about the emergence of criminal gangs, abductions and other phenomena not present before, but what is fascinating is that, compared to the lack of institutions, the level is actually low. If you don't have a large number of police, no courts, it's an open invitation to criminal activities.

They say Mr Taqi is responsible for a series of criminal activities here. Do you write about that too?

SURROI: We don't have evidence of that. If we did we would write about it.

I'm going to quote Mr Taqi again because it was he who announced that at the time of the local elections, or soon after, there would also be general elections and after that some kind of international conference which would deal with the status of Kosovo. Is that information true? Do you expect something like that?

SURROI: That would be the logical order. As always happens half of the political predictions made are actually about the timing of events.

How do you see the timing of events in Kosovo? And what would be a realistic final outcome?

SURROI: I don't believe we will have anything more than local elections this year then as early as next year we will enter another phase, which is thinking about organising parliamentary elections. I'm not concerned about the status issue right now, I think we must focus on the issue of creating institutions, the issue of creating a democratic society, economy and so on, structural changes within the society and the question of status will naturally arise in a more natural environment than this today.

At an international conference you organised you said, among other things, that you expected cooperation with Serbia, that you expected cooperation with Serbia in the future. How do you see that cooperation?

SURROI: Whether it's now or later we must, in any case, be prepared for that and Serbia must be prepared for that. It's going to be a natural process. It's important to say today that people must simply think in geographical terms, however they develop, whatever our status is eventually, our northern border is with Serbia and in any case we will need to be open to Serbia because of our interests, so it's going to be a normal process.

Do you even think about Belgrade? Would you go there?

SURROI: I wouldn't, no. Nothing particularly attracts me in Belgrade now. I think it is too early for that, even emotionally, because there in Belgrade are those very same uniforms which were killing people down here and killing my closest relatives and friends. I don't see any reason to go to Belgrade.

talk with Nekibe Kelymendi, Secretary-General of the Democratic League of Kosovo

The first crime in Kosovo which drew wide public attention at the beginning of the bombing was the murder of a renowned Pristina lawyer, Bairam Kelymendi, and his two sons Kastriot and Kushtrim. Bairam Kelymendi was an activist of the Pristina Committee for Human Rights and he several times presented documents to the Hague Tribunal about crimes against Kosovo Albanians and even a report accusing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. His wife, Nekibe Kelymendi, who is now Secretary-General of the Democratic League of Kosovo, thinks that these reports were the motive for his murder:

KELYMENDI: It happened only two or three hours after the first bombing of Pristina. The whole family was together, we had no light. At 12.50 there was suddenly a loud pounding at the door. They said "Open up, it's the police!" We didn't open the door, we dialled 92 and said "Please, somebody is breaking into our house, help us". We hung up, they were already inside, they dropped two bombs in by the stairs leading to the first floor and when they dropped the bombs they told us "You have bombs inside here, leave the house within five seconds". However when the bombs didn't go off they immediately broke in, they broke a really massive door. I don't know how they smashed it. As soon as they came in I cam out onto the stair with one of my sons, on the first floor. They said "You asked for NATO, you asked for a republic". They ordered us to lie face down with our hands behind our heads, me and my eldest son. My daughter-in-law was in the room with two children, they started crying, my grandson, my elder son's son, was only two years and three months old, his daughter was six and a half; they began to cry. One of those special police began going up to the floor where the bedrooms were and I just lifted my head up. I saw Bairam go down as soon as he reached the last step, two special police hit him with rifle butts and he fell and I couldn't lift my head because I had two rifles pressed to it, me and my elder son. Behind Bairam came my younger son, Kushtrim, who was only 16 years and three months old. They said "Kiss your children goodbye". Then they began searching, they asked Bairam for weapons. Bairam said "I don't have a weapon".

At 1.40 am they took him out of the house, first Bairam, then my elder son, they didn't let me stand up, my younger son got up too, confused. One of the special police asked what to do my younger son. The man who was obviously the commander of the group said "Take him too". In the morning I went to one police station after another looking for them. I was treated everywhere in the worst possible way, the worst possible behaviour to a human being, especially to an elderly person and an intellectual who was not unknown to those police. I went there again, to ask them to at least remove the bombs from our home because here were small children around and I didn't know anything about weapons and I didn't know whether there was a chance of them going off. However they told me, "Yes, you want us to come and remove bombs set by the KLA". Then I asked them "Come and investigate the scene to see whether the KLA put the bombs there, your duty is to come and investigate the premises, or to make some kind of official report and remove the bombs, if you're in charge of taking care of people". And the next day I again came to look for them in the police stations.

Then I decided to go all the way to the Security Service. The I went to the District Court to see Judge Danica Marinkovic because she was the ambassador from Belgrade for rigged trials in Kosovo. I went to see her and I said to her "Help me find Bairam and my sons, dead or alive". She behaved as if she new nothing but Danica was closely connected to the State Security Service and directly to Belgrade, she answered to Belgrade. Then I went to see the prosecutor and I saw all the staff, the president of the Pristina District Court and the judges, prosecutors and lawyers, all celebrating the death of Bairam and his two sons – they were drinking. It was a celebration.

I went home then because I knew from that behaviour that they were no longer among the living. One man called my brother saying "Come and I'll show you the place where the bodies are, they were executed by firing squad". He drove along the road below the barracks to Kosovo Polje and found three bodies near the stations, the bodies of the three people dearest to me, Bairam and my sons. I tried to take them but Danica Marinkovic was already there with her team. The official investigation said that they found Chinese-made shells; in every rigged investigation when they allegedly found weapons on the accused they always said "Chinese-made" because it works, because they knew that Albania had Chinese weapons, Albania was close and so on. And nothing else. They said that unknown persons had done it.

They wouldn't give me the bodies until the autopsy was done. I don't know why they did an autopsy when they knew everything but that was the procedure. I got them on Sunday, they were killed on Thursday at 1.55 a.m. I'm emphasising that because I have evidence that they were put in front of a firing squad. First they shot the children, then Bairam. I decided to stay in Pristina, I couldn't leave the graves behind.

When I left the house, two of my sisters came with me to keep an eye on me. I had some cash, about 22,000 Deutschmarks, but I also had a lot of gold, collected over 35 years of marriage by Bairam or the children. The gold itself was worth up to 100,000 Deutschmarks. My sister's neighbour, A Serb, was in uniform when my sister went to her apartment to pack some basic things for herself. He stopped her, holding a Kalashnikov, and said "Give me the keys". My sister was afraid and gave him the keys. This Dejan Tomic, who was in an army uniform, took the keys. When she went to my house the next day she saw that all my jewellery had been stolen, all my money. I said to my sister "Since they've been shot I don't care about anything, I don't care about the gold or the money".

And so we got on with life, 83 days here. I think Bairam's murder was planned, planned in Belgrade, in the highest circles of the state. We let the children decide, they decided to stay with us, they didn't want to leave us, they suffered for it too, they became victims too, although I can say freely that they were absolutely not interested in politics. Bairam and I were dealing with politics. I hope deep inside that the murderers will be found and that one day they will appear before a court. I want to say that the body of my younger son had 24 bullet wounds, Bairam's 32 bullet wounds, the body of my elder son more than 20. I lost the courage to keep counting them all. They hated them that much. If it had only been an order for execution the bullet they put in Bairam's head, between the eyebrows, or another in the head would probably have been enough, the bullets they shot into the chests of my sons would be enough, but that was not enough for them. They were not only executioners, they were criminals, because they expressed enormous hate through the way they shot them.

SEE FURTHER INFORMATION AND DISCUSSION ON B2-92:

KOSOVA FORUM - The brutalities of rape, torture, and murder will be told and re-told for generations in the Balkans; fostering more and more super-nationalism and distrust between muslims and christians, Serb and Albanian.

NET-DISCUSSION: WHAT SHALL BE DONE? In Serbia's case freedom has to be achieved through offering justice not only for the Serbs but to those that Milosevic thugs so brutally suppressed, killed, robbed, deported and whose homes and property he destroyed.

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