Told That Foe Was Italy, Soldiers Say

Fresh-faced and homesick, captured Yugoslav soldiers in Slovenia say they thought they were going to defend their country against an Italian attack when they were ordered to seize border crossings.

“Our officer said the Italians were attacking the frontier and that was why we were being sent to the border,” Driton Fazli, a 22-year-old from Kosovo province, told reporters from a makeshift prison at a local school.

He was one of several prisoners interviewed who said they thought they were facing such an attack. They are among more than 600 Yugoslav army prisoners captured by Slovenian militia units in clashes around this border town.

Most are young conscripts who appear to have little idea what the fighting was about.

The prisoners, smiling and apparently relieved that for them at least the fighting is over, are being held in the school, sleeping on mattresses spread out on classroom floors.

The general view among 12 prisoners interviewed was that Yugoslavia’s problems have to be resolved without bloodshed.

“With war, you can’t resolve anything,” said Petrov Vanc, a 19-year-old Macedonian.

Many of the captured soldiers are little older than the schoolchildren whose paintings still adorn the walls. Several said they had no idea why they were ordered to seize border crossings, and many admitted they had given up without firing a shot.

“Our lieutenant just said: ‘Let’s surrender,’ ” said one.

Fazli, who came from Kosovo to do his national service at the local garrison, was captured June 28 when the army tried to seize Slovenia’s border posts after the breakaway republic proclaimed its independence.

He was shot in the leg, but it was not until he was taken prisoner that he realized who had done the shooting.

Sitting beside a friend in a part of the school converted into a temporary hospital, he nervously chain-smoked and rarely lifted his eyes from the ground. But he displayed no ill will toward his captors.

“I want to thank all the staff here because they have been very good to me,” he said.

There are eight wounded prisoners in the hospital section. They include two Yugoslav soldiers who were badly burned when their tank was set afire during the fighting.

Prison commander Mishovic Spjepean of the Slovenian territorial defense force said that more than 100 prisoners had already been allowed to leave.

For many, the only condition has been that a civilian relative should come and pick them up.

In Belgrade, the Yugoslav state presidency Thursday ordered Slovenia to release all federal army prisoners by midnight.

Slovenian radio said Wednesday that mothers of soldiers captured in fighting between the army and Slovenian militia in the last week were welcome to come and pick up their sons.

Convoys of parents seeking the return of their captured children have left Belgrade for Croatia and Slovenia.