Torture Camps in Albania
By Altin Raxhimi, Michael Montgomery and Vladimir Karaj
09 April 2009 The Kosovo Liberation Army maintained a network of prisons in their bases in Albania and Kosovo during and after the conflict of 1999, eyewitnesses allege. Only now are the details of what occurred there emerging.
A run-down industrial compound with shattered windows and peeling plaster in Kukes, Albania, was used to hold dozens of civilians, mainly Kosovo Albanians suspected of collaboration, but also Serbs and Roma captive there, beaten and tortured. Some were killed, their remains never recovered. The men who allegedly directed the abuses were officers of the KLA.
At least 25 people were imprisoned in Kukes, witnesses say. Amongst them were three Kosovo Albanian women. In the camp at least 18 people were killed, while others were later rescued by NATO troops.
It appears that Kukes housed one of a number of secret detention centres in Albania and Kosovo, and that prisoners were transferred from one facility to another.
Even after the NATO interventions, a camp was maintained in Baballoq/Babaloc in Kosovo, holding around 30 Serb and Roma prisoners, whose current whereabouts are unknown. Other camps in Albania may have held Serbs kidnapped in Kosovo after the war, according to four sources.
The names of several alleged perpetrators have been known to UNMIK for some time. One of them is still holding a high position in the Kosovo judiciary, Balkan Insight understands.
Yellow Mercedes of Death
These grave allegations about the Kukes camp, in the north west of Albania, are based on interviews with several sources: two eyewitnesses – one former inmate and one member of the KLA, records from a cemetery in Albania and UN documents that we have gained access to, which detail the testimonies of people ill-treated in Kukes.
Together, they paint a portrait of a brutal prison regime that is at odds with the claims of former KLA leaders, who say they adhered to international human rights conventions and never detained civilians.
The abuses in Kukes may not have been isolated events. According to former KLA fighters who talked to us, as well as independent testimony provided to UN investigators, the KLA maintained a loose network of at least six secret jails in the dozen or so bases they operated in Albania and the two they had in Kosovo during and after the 1999 war.
Part of the funding for the research behind this article was provided by SCOOP.
Read the whole article here.
