Freed prisoners tell of beatings in Serb jails

THE MAN pressed his shaved head against the window of the bus and the glass was instantly smeared with tears. After more than six weeks locked up in a Serbian prison he and his friends had finally come home.

In a remarkable breakthrough yesterday, 166 Albanians seized by Serb police and held without charge were released and taken home. They arrived back in Kosovo's southern city of Pec yesterday afternoon amid scenes of overwhelming emotion.

"I am so happy to see my family again," said Gani Krasniqi, tears streaming down his face as he hugged the uncle he feared he would never see again. "Prison was so bad. They beat me very much, very, very much. We helped each other survive - the stronger ones helping those who were weaker. Sometimes we had to feed them with a spoon."

The journey to freedom had started late on Friday when the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) brokered a deal with the Yugoslav Ministry of Justice to release the prisoners held in two jails in Serbia - Leskovac in southern Serbia and Zajecar in the east.

The arrangement surprised observers. Although charities and pressure groups had been campaigning for the release of prisoners, progress had appeared slow. Apparently one of the prison governors said it was a gesture of goodwill and he hoped the Kosovo Liberation Army would release the Serb prisoners he claimed they held.

The prisoners - starved, pale and with sunken cheeks and eyes - all told similar stories. They had been seized by Serb police either in their homes or as they tried to flee to Albania or Macedonia. "I was beaten every day. They kept telling me I was a terrorist. They made me eat soap and sing Serb songs," said Isuf Gashi, 24, a small, thin man who pulled up his sleeves to show the welts from handcuffs. "For three days they kept picking me up by my throat to try and make me tell them the names of people in the KLA. Once they put a gun in my mouth and cocked it. Until yesterday I thought I would be killed. I hope my family are all right. For weeks I did not think I would ever see them again and I wished I was dead."

The prisoners had left many others behind in jail. Hadjar Meka, 54, a reporter for the Kosovo Albanian newspaper Rilindja was released from Zajecar but his son was forced to remain in jail because he had no papers. "The rest of my family are in Albania, they do not know if I am alive or dead," he said. "They made us sign papers to say we did things. I thought I would be killed."

Others returned home to more tragedy. One man released on Friday was able to ring a cousin in Holland only to learn that his brother had been buried that afternoon. But when they arrived back in Pec yesterday - the streets full of people cheering and waving - the prisoners, for a moment at least, tried to be positive.

"Let me tell you that the top men in the KLA and the government of [KLA chief Hashim] Thaci and the international bodies always had the prisoner problem at the top of their minds," said Hasan Metaj, the regional governor of Pec, who addressed the prisoners inside the KLA headquarters in the city yesterday. "Don't think that they ever forgot you."