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| Protesting Albanians: We'll take other steps |
| 6 January 2009 | 10:11 -> 20:24
| Source:
B92, Beta |
PREŠEVO --
Ethnic Albanians in Preševo are calling for the release of the members of the Gnjilane Group of the KLA arrested on suspicion of war crimes.
 | An Albanian child is seen during the protest (Beta)
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The protests will last until "every single Albanian arrested on the orders of the War Crimes Prosecution on December 26 is released from custody", says Memet Azizi, one of the protest organizers.
“We want the authorities in Belgrade to release all the suspects on bail because they did not commit the war crimes that the prosecution has accused them of,” says Azizi.
The protest will serve to send a message to the public and condemn members of the police and Gendarmerie for their "heavy-handed and spectacular” arrest operation, during which Albanian property was destroyed, the protestors gathered in Preševo on Tuesday said.
The atmosphere has been further charged by an appeal sent to civil rights organizations yesterday. The appeal was signed by MP Riza Halimi and Preševo and Bujanovac Municipal Presidents Nader Sadiku and Saip Kamberi.
The signatories have called on the organizations to send their representatives to visit the imprisoned Albanians to hear from them how they were "physically and mentally abused during the arrests", thus breaching international conventions on human rights and freedoms.
More than a thousand protesters carried placards reading, "Preševo valley is Kosovo", "NATO control in Preševo valley", as well as Albanian and EU flags, and photographs of the ten arrested suspects.
The local ethnic Albanians demonstrating today also said they view the arrests as "pressure on them to move out" of this area in southern Serbia, which they referred to as "eastern Kosovo".
Former members of the so-called Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac Liberation Army (Albanian: UCPMB) Orhan Redzepi, said that Albanians will, beside protests, "undertake other steps".
When asked which steps he had in mind, Redzepi said, "we'll see".
UCPMB was an offshoot of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, Albanian: UCK, Serbian: OVK) which attacked Serbian security forces in the area after the 1999 war in the province.
"I think that with this, the poking of the sleeping lion has started, only, it would be good not to stab it, because it would turn from a sleeping to a wounded lion," Redzepi elaborated.
Asked about the likely influence the protests will have on the security situation in the south of Serbia, he said that "Albanians cannot take responsibility for that".
"The government of Serbia, that is, the MUP, are guilty for everything that is happening here, ask them," said Redzepi.
The ten ethnic Albanians arrested in December were members of KLA's Gnjilane Group. They are suspected of committing war crimes, that include kidnapping, rape, torture, mutilation and murder of at least 51 Kosovo Serb civilians.
The crimes took place in the Gnjilane region after the 1999 war – from June to October that year.
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