Serbs Free 54 Kosovo Albanians Held Since NATO Bombing

Fifty-four Kosovo Albanian men were released from a Serbian prison Monday, returning to an emotional welcome in their homeland after months behind bars.

Relatives and friends gathered in Pristina, the Kosovo capital, to greet the freed prisoners, most of whom apparently had been detained since May by Serbian forces during NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia.

“I can’t describe my happiness,” Drita Nushi, a mother from the western city of Djakovica, said as she and her two daughters wept and welcomed back her only son, Gent.

He described how Serbian police had killed his father, a university professor, early in the NATO bombing campaign, which began in March, and then rounded him up in May when police went through the city separating men of fighting age from women and children.

“I can’t believe he’s returned, after I lost my husband,” his mother said.

“I’m so happy. I hope everyone gets released,” Gent Nushi said, adding that the prisoners had not been treated too badly in the jail in western Serbia.

The fate of ethnic Albanian prisoners in Serbian jails has been one of the most pressing and painful issues for the people of Kosovo since NATO’s bombs forced Serbian and Yugoslav forces from the province and international peacekeepers arrived in mid-June.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which arranged the transfer of the prisoners back to Kosovo, says it now has access to about 1,900 Kosovo detainees in Serbian jails.

Activists estimate that the actual figure could be more than 5,000. Prisoners held in Kosovo were taken to jails elsewhere in Serbia in the final days of NATO bombing, just before the peacekeeping force arrived.