Haradinaj trial: Witness describes torture

Haradinaj trial: Witness describes torture

Halfway there they were stopped by the Serbian police. They made him and his family go back to Đakovica. Soon, they were intercepted by ten KLA soldiers who accused him of collaborating with the Serbian authorities.

He was taken to Jablanica together with his wife and children. He was separated from his family and shut up in a house where his six-week Calvary began.

The very first day, he was brutally beaten with baseball bats, fists and feet. The beatings did not abate in intensity in the days that followed.

“Soon I was swollen beyond recognition, I couldn’t tell where my head was and where my neck was,” the witness said, adding that his left arm was broken then, and he still has limited use of it.

He claims he heard names of those who beat him when they called out each others’ names. He knew their names are Lahi, Nazmi and Hamza. Since his release, he learned that those men were related, and that their last name was Brahimaj.

He also learned that Lahi was known as Madzup. According to the prosecution, the makeshift prison in Jablanica was under the command of the third accused, Lahi Brahimaj, on the orders of Ramush Haradinaj.

The witness claims that about a dozen other people passed through the prison during his stay in Jablanica: Serbs, Montenegrins, Albanians and Muslims. They were all beaten daily, by at least one of the three Brahimaj.

The witness spent the first night in prison with a police officer he knew as Nenad. He was taken away the next day and the witness never saw him again.

According to the indictment, police officer Nenad Remistar was brought to Jablanica on June 13, 1998. He was severely beaten and taken away the next day. He is still missing.

Just before the witness was released, a Catholic Albanian by the name of Pal Krasniqi was brought to Jablanica, the witness recounted. He saw Krasniqi last on the day he was released, July 25.

Krasniqi was in a bad shape: he couldn’t walk, ear or drink. “He looked like a dying man,” the witness said. Krasniqi’s son has recently testified at the trial of Haradinaj, Balaj and Brahimaj that his father was last seen in early July, and that he was under KLA escort. Pal Krasniqi is still missing, too.

In open session, the prosecutor did not ask the witness about the fate of his wife and four children who had also been brought to Jablanica.

The witness testified under the pseudonym and with image and voice distortion, because he and his family still live in Kosovo, where, as the Chamber noted in its decision, “the security situation is particularly adverse for the witness”.