15 Sep 14
A witness told the trial of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s ‘Drenica Group’ cell, accused of assaulting prisoners during the 1998-99 war, that he was severely beaten by the defendants.

Nektar Zogjani
BIRN
Pristina

The protected witness codenamed ‘Witness A’ told the court on Monday that he was seriously assaulted in captivity by Pristina’s former ambassador to Albania and Kosovo Security Force ex-commander Sylejman Selimi and other members of the Drenica Group.

Witness A said the former KLA fighters beat him “because they said I had cooperated with Serbia” during Belgrade’s conflict with the guerrilla force.

He described the men who beat him as “merciless”.

Selimi and six other former KLA fighters are on trial for allegedly torturing and mistreating prisoners at a detention centre in Likovc/Likovac in 1998.

According to the indictment raised by EU prosecutors, Selimi “in his capacity as a KLA member and as a person exercising control over the Likovc detention centre in co-perpetration with Sami Lushtaku, Avni Zabeli and Sahit Jashari, violated the bodily integrity and the health of an undefined number of Albanian civilians” who were being held there.

In September 1998, he is alleged to have abused ‘Witness A’ by “beating him with fists and wooden sticks”.

He is also alleged to have “ordered Witness B, another civilian held in the Likovc detention centre, to repeatedly strike Witness A with a wooden plank and pinched Witness A’s genitals with an iron tool, subsequently dragging him on the floor with it”.

Besides ex-ambassador Selimi, another prominent politician and former KLA member, Sami Lushtaku, is charged with mistreating other prisoners and killing one man at the KLA detention centre.

Born in Drenica in 1970, Selimi was a KLA commander in the Drenica area in 1998-99, and commanded the Kosovo Protection Corps from 2006 to 2009 and the Kosovo Security Force from 2009 to 2011, before becoming ambassador to Tirana.

In May this year, he was cleared of war crimes over the alleged beating and torture of two women during the war in the former Serbian province.