6 Americans Freed, Expelled by Serbs After Close Shave

Six American activists arrested by Serbian police over the weekend were freed Monday and expelled across the border into Macedonia, but only after jail authorities shaved their heads, U.S. officials said.

The arrests and stiff jail terms had provoked outrage from Washington, where officials accused the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of attempting to harass foreign aid workers and journalists in the wake of a Serbian anti-terrorist operation in the province of Kosovo that has left scores of ethnic Albanians dead.

The activists--three from California--arrived in the Macedonian capital of Skopje on Monday afternoon and seemed fit, officials there said. They ran afoul of Serbian authorities when they failed to register with the police as required by law and on Saturday were sentenced to 10 days in jail.

“They seemed pretty happy to be here,” U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia Christopher Hill said in a telephone interview from Skopje. “They were not too happy about their haircuts.”

Hill said they had gotten a military-style buzz cut; it is routine in Serbian jails for new prisoners to be shorn. Otherwise, there was no sign the five men and one woman had been mistreated, U.S. officials said.

The Americans had traveled to Kosovo, in southern Serbia, last week to lecture the ethnic Albanian majority on nonviolent resistance, including the art of picketing, getting arrested and staging sit-ins.

Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are fighting for independence from heavy-handed Serbian rule. Most of the struggle has involved pacifist, nonconfrontational actions.

The Americans were put on trial and sentenced Saturday and jailed. They were freed Monday and driven by police to the border with Macedonia, where they were retrieved by U.S. Embassy officials.

U.S. officials had not been allowed to see them in the jail in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. It was unclear why the Americans were released. Holding them might have proved a greater embarrassment to the government than releasing them--especially as Belgrade faces possible economic sanctions when the six-nation Contact Group meets to decide how to punish Milosevic for the excessive force used in this month’s police crackdown.

Five of the Americans were with the San Francisco-based Peace Workers activist group. They were led by David Hartsough, 57, of San Francisco.

The group also included Daniel Perez, 21, of Berkeley; Teresa Crawford, 23, of San Francisco; Bruce Hemmer, 31, of Virginia; and Alberto Cevallos, 27, no hometown. The sixth U.S. citizen was identified as Peter Lippman, 46, of Seattle.

“We were treated relatively decently,” said Lippman, who added that he was in jail with inmates whose hands were swollen from apparent beatings.