E. Kosovo

83. The ongoing crisis in the province of Kosovo has dominated international attention to the situation of human rights in the FRY, and the Special Rapporteur has devoted special attention to its nature and consequences. He stresses that the crisis in Kosovo is not new or isolated. The immediate crisis of politics, diplomacy and human rights engendered by the violence in Kosovo is based on long-standing systemic causes within the FRY which, if not addressed throughout the country, threaten national and regional security.

84. Though violence in Kosovo decreased since the Special Rapporteur's October mission, no political agreement had been reached by late 1998 to implement the general framework set out in the 13 October accord. Representatives of an enlarged Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission (KDOM) continued to monitor events and, at this writing, the OSCE announced that the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), which had deployed its advance team, was to begin operations in mid-January 1999. In this environment, violations of human rights that had characterized the crisis in Kosovo for many months were continuing to occur. Violations threatening security of the person continued unchecked in detention and arbitrary detention. There were new allegations and reports of summary execution. Other serious violations assumed a pattern of attack and retaliation resembling events in February, March and early April 1998. Violations were attributed to Serbian security forces, the Kosovo Liberation Army and armed persons representing paramilitary groups and village defence units.

85. Accurate information about the statistical scope of conflict in Kosovo has been difficult to obtain. The elusive nature of the numbers has affected events on the ground and attempts to defuse them. New and often conflicting numbers of persons killed, wounded, abducted, arrested and alleged missing, as well as those displaced from the areas of conflict or returning to the region, have appeared every day. The numbers in any category cannot be exhaustively confirmed, and security considerations have often prevented access to areas of concern. After the 16 June "Moscow declaration", diplomatic missions accredited in the FRY increased their presence in Kosovo. Diplomatic monitors concentrated on patrolling conflict areas and gathering general information on the scope and nature of armed activity, but have had no single mandate and no specific human rights monitoring responsibilities. At this writing, the OSCE verification mission was defining an understanding of the "human dimension" of the 16 October agreement, to include democratization and the organization and conduct of elections. As a result, specialized information from intergovernmental sources on the situation of human rights in Kosovo was coming principally from United Nations field presences.

86. In his letter of 8 April, the Special Rapporteur focused on human rights concerns related to operations carried out by the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Drenica region during late February and March 1998 and to the activity of armed Kosovo Albanians during that same period. In the following months, the increased intensity of armed hostilities between government forces and armed groups of the "Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA) and gross violations attributed to all sides lessened only in October after days of negotiations under threat of NATO intervention. In the first week of December, violence reached its highest level since the 13 October accord. After a long period of sustained armed confrontation along fluid front lines, the nature of the conflict had returned to a stage of isolated attacks and retaliations, dramatically illustrated by cases of abduction, arbitrary detention, and reports of summary executions. Testimonies gathered by the Special Rapporteur in the field suggest that, throughout the conflict, government forces have used excessive force, including deliberate destruction of property, leading to extensive civilian casualties. Concerns raised in the Special Rapporteur's 8 April letter, as well as in his report to the fifty-third session of the General Assembly, remain unaddressed.

87. Recent months have been marked by more discoveries of concentrations of corpses and evidence of massacres, including the massacre of civilians. Serbian authorities announced that, on 27 August, in the village of Klecka, they discovered in a makeshift crematorium what they believed to be the remains of civilians abducted and then killed by the KLA. The exact number, identity, age, and sex of the persons who died at Klecka has yet to be determined. Shortly after the discovery of the Klecka site, the remains of at least 39 persons were discovered in nearby Glodjane where exhumation was continuing at year's end. On 29 September, the badly mutilated bodies of 14 Kosovo Albanians, including six women, six children and two elderly men, were found in a forest near Gornje Obrinje in the Drenica region. There are reports that on 26 September 1998 another 14 Kosovo Albanian men were killed in Golubovac, near Gornje Obrinje. In early October, police discovered the remains of four persons, believed to have been abducted by the KLA, in a pit close to the copper mine in Volujak near Klina. Two more bodies were found on 4 October near Gremnik, and returning displaced persons continue to report coming upon human remains.

88. As a result of efforts by the European Union and other international organizations, including OHCHR and ICTY, and the Government of the FRY, some progress has been made in initiating independent investigations into these alleged arbitrary killings. On 20 October, a team of experts from the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Helsinki University arrived in Belgrade, following clarification of the experts' terms of reference in contacts between the Finnish and FRY ministries for foreign affairs. The team has authorization from government authorities to investigate grave sites in Glodjane, Golubovac, Gornje Obrinje, Volujak, Klecka and Orahovac; it began work at Gornje Obrinje on 10 December. Information gathered by the team will be shared with the Serbian Government and the European Union. The team has also been asked by both Kosovo Albanian and Serb non-governmental sources to investigate perhaps as many as a dozen other sites. Despite official authorization, the team has encountered delays and obstacles in its cooperation with authorities and found its investigations complicated by ongoing Serbian forensic examinations in certain cases. Preliminary examinations, as well as contemporary media reports and first-hand observations, suggest that some sites have been tampered with, compromising and complicating forensic investigation. Considering the nature of these crimes, the Special Rapporteur stresses the importance of full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

89. The Special Rapporteur remains concerned about the fate of the Serb, Kosovo Albanian and Roma civilians and Serbian police officers abducted by armed Kosovo Albanians, believed to be KLA. He has appealed directly for their release. Efforts continue to determine whether any newly discovered grave sites contain the remains of those believed abducted. According to information received from the FRY authorities, as of 7 December 1998, 282 civilians and police had been abducted by Kosovo Albanians. Of these, the fate and whereabouts of 136 persons were still unknown; others were released, escaped, or had been identified as killed.

90. Information on the activity of Kosovo Albanian paramilitary "tribunals" has become public since the 13 October accord. The activity of the "tribunals" suggests a pattern of arbitrary arrest. On 30 October, two Kosovo Albanian activists associated with the Democratic League of Kosovo were arrested by the KLA in Malisevo and placed under interrogation before being released on 1 December. A KLA communiqué also acknowledged that two additional individuals had been executed. On 31 October, according to a communiqué, the KLA arrested three men and killed a fourth near Podujevo for "alleged criminal activity". On 1 November, a KLA "military court" sentenced two abducted Tanjug journalists to 60 days of detention for having committed violations of KLA regulations, respectively "the military police book of regulations, chapter VIII, item 5, page 27". Representatives of international agencies, including ICRC and OHCHR, were not allowed to visit the abductees who were released to the KVM after 41 days of arbitrary detention. On 9 November, in Srbica, KLA forces abducted the third and fourth Serb civilians taken since mid-October. Family members of the victims and villagers from Leposavic organized the arbitrary detention of roughly 25 Kosovo Albanian passengers from an intercity bus. All of them were released on 11 and 12 November in exchange for the two abducted Serbs. On 17 November, near Podujevo, KLA members abducted a Serbian police officer. On 23 November, the KLA issued a communiqué stating that it had "arrested" the police officer and other Albanian "collaborators". On 24 November, through the actions of the United States element of the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission, the officer was released. The Special Rapporteur denounces these abductions as grave violations of basic principles of international human rights and humanitarian law.

91. The Serbian Ministry of Justice has confirmed to the Special Rapporteur that more than 1,500 persons, including 500 in absentia, are currently being investigated under suspicion of involvement in anti-State activities and in activities of the KLA. The number of persons in actual custody is difficult to obtain, as "custody" includes persons in pre-arraignment police detention, under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior and in investigative or post-sentencing detention, under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice. Serbian security officials in Kosovo have arrested and held in police detention large numbers of individuals for periods ranging from several hours to several days. The routine police "screening" of male returnees, however, had abated in the aftermath of the 13 October accord. Persons in police detention are routinely held incommunicado, without access to attorneys, longer than the three-plus-one days of pre-arraignment detention allowed by law. Their families are not informed of their arrest or of their release from police detention. The number of persons subsequently arraigned and held in investigative detention is unclear, as the ICRC is not routinely and regularly informed of arraignments by the Ministry of Justice. As a result, the Special Rapporteur can only estimate, as have the Serbian Minister of Justice and defence attorneys, that from 1,500 to 1,900 cases were pending in late 1998 on charges related to terrorism, anti-State activity or aiding and abetting such activity. This does not include persons in police detention or persons called for "informative talks" by the police, whose number is absolutely unknown and whose names are known only anecdotally or when reported on a case-by-case basis by NGOs or family members.

92. The Special Rapporteur notes that, two months after the 13 October accord, implementation of the last two points of the accord, which concern prosecution in State courts, remained unclear. The Serbian Minister of Justice had sent teams of prosecutors to district courts in Kosovo to examine individual cases, and court officials confirmed to the Special Rapporteur that they had participated in working sessions with representatives of the Serbian Ministry of Justice and the office of the President of Serbia. The Ministry of Justice, together with the federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the office of the President of Serbia, have solicited OHCHR's cooperation in resolution of individual cases and categories of cases pending in Kosovo to which OHCHR or the Special Rapporteur have drawn particular attention. These efforts resulted in the release of several individuals from pre-trial detention and/or pending appeal. Those released include some medical and humanitarian workers and juveniles on whose behalf the Special Rapporteur had appealed. New arrests, trials, and sentencing continued. The Special Rapporteur and OHCHR continue to raise individual cases of alleged human rights violations of detainees and, in early December alone, submitted to the Serbian Ministry of Justice over 50 requests for clarification of alleged violations regarding persons in Ministry custody, including elderly and infirm detainees.

93. Arrests, trials and sentencing are most numerous in the districts of Prizren and Pec, in which the bulk of armed activity has occurred and where a total of approximately 1,350 cases were pending at the end of the year, far exceeding the number of cases in the courts of Kosovska Mitrovica, Pristina, Prokuplje and Gnjilane combined. The district court in Prizren, which had been holding trials related to allegations of terrorism and anti-State activity on a regular daily basis, suspended trials from 31 October through 9 November so that, according to the court president, case review could be conducted. The district court in Pec, however, continued to hold up to four trials a day, except when weather or security conditions prevented transport of defendants to court. At this writing, the Special Rapporteur had recorded 92 completed decisions of courts of first instance throughout Kosovo, but that figure was by no means comprehensive and only included court documents at hand. Of that number, nearly all decisions had been convictions, with only eight acquittals. Sentences ranged from 60 days to 13 years, with the majority of sentences from two to five years. For sentences of less than five years, until they have been confirmed by a court of final instance, detention is not mandatory during the appeals process, but most so sentenced have been detained nonetheless.

94. The Special Rapporteur is alarmed at consistent disregard by Serbian State security forces of both domestic and international standards pertaining to police conduct and treatment of detainees, illustrated by a growing number of cases of arbitrary detention and systematic ill-treatment, abuse and torture, including five deaths in custody. Throughout Serbia, persons are arbitrarily detained by the police for questioning or held in pre-trial detention longer than the period mandated by law. Their families are not informed of their arrest or of their release from police detention. Lawyers report that they experience serious difficulties in gaining access to their clients and are generally not allowed to consult their clients in private. In practice, pre-trial detainees in police (investigative) and court (post-arraignment) custody are not permitted access to their own physicians, but only to official physicians provided by the police or court. Official physicians do not report injuries sustained by detainees during police interrogations, even when those injuries are obvious, and do not provide adequate medical treatment. These serious violations occur when persons are held in pre-arraignment custody under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior, or in investigative detention and after court sentencing under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice. In his discussions with the Serbian Minister of Justice, the Serbian Minister of the Interior, and the FRY Foreign Minister, the Special Rapporteur strongly emphasized the urgent need to end impunity for security officials and others responsible for human rights abuses.

95. As an illustrative example of arbitrary process by police and judicial officials, disregard for the rule of law and violation of domestic and international standards, the Special Rapporteur notes the case of attorney Destan Rukiqi, arrested in his office in Pristina on 23 July. The same day Rukiqi was arrested, he was tried and sentenced to the maximum 60 days in prison for "disturbing public order". The Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs brought charges against Rukiqi based on an investigative judge's claim that Rukiqi had insulted her by saying she had behaved like a policeman. Rukiqi made the remark after the judge had denied him his right as a defence attorney, guaranteed under the Law on Criminal Procedure, to unconditional review of court files relating to a client. Six days after sentencing, Rukiqi was taken to hospital suffering from kidney injuries allegedly inflicted in the Pristina prison. Rukiqi was finally transferred to the prison hospital in Belgrade, where he stayed till 22 August when he was released by a decision of the Supreme Court of Serbia overturning the sentence on procedural grounds. The court did not enter into the merits of Rukiqi's arrest, conviction, or treatment during detention, but argued that the maximum sentence was unmerited. The Special Rapporteur has spoken with the hospital administrator of the Belgrade prison hospital and with Rukiqi himself; both attested to Rukiqi's medical condition on arrival in Belgrade and adequate medical treatment provided him in the Belgrade prison hospital.

96. The Special Rapporteur is concerned at widespread abuse of the investigative procedure of "informative talks", which has amounted to harassment of targeted or vulnerable populations and individuals. Summons to such talks can by law be issued only in the event of criminal conduct or to gather direct information on criminal activity under investigation.