Tagesnachrichten 20. Juli 1998
von ALBANEWS und anderen
weitere Presse-Meldungen
further press news
Tagesnachrichten 20. Juli 1998
20 July 98
The Times
'Angel' starts Kosovo prison sentence
FROM ANTHONY LOYD IN BELGRADE
A BRITISH diplomat who yesterday visited Sally
Becker, the British aid worker, in Kosovo's only women's prison said she
seemed to be in good health.
David Slinn, First Secretary at the British Embassy
in Belgrade, said: "I talked to her for about 40 minutes. The conditions
seemed pretty good." Becker began a month-long jail sentence in Djakovica,
Kosovo, at the weekend after being convicted by Serb authorities of having
illegally entered across the Albanian border. Becker, 37, known as the
Angel of Mostar after she rescued 25 wounded children from the southern
Bosnian town, was arrested by Yugoslav soldiers in a frontier region above
Junik, western Kosovo. Serb sources said she was trying to smuggle refugees
into Albania.
The Daily Telegraph
'Angel' starts Kosovo prison sentence
FROM ANTHONY LOYD IN BELGRADE
A BRITISH diplomat who yesterday visited Sally
Becker, the British aid worker, in Kosovo's only women's prison said she
seemed to be in good health.
David Slinn, First Secretary at the British Embassy
in Belgrade, said: "I talked to her for about 40 minutes. The conditions
seemed pretty good." Becker began a month-long jail sentence in Djakovica,
Kosovo, at the weekend after being convicted by Serb authorities of having
illegally entered across the Albanian border. Becker, 37, known as the
Angel of Mostar after she rescued 25 wounded children from the southern
Bosnian town, was arrested by Yugoslav soldiers in a frontier region above
Junik, western Kosovo. Serb sources said she was trying to smuggle refugees
into Albania.
SERBIAN sources said last night that they had
begun a counter-offensive to liberate 20 officers besieged in their police
station by Kosovo Liberation Army fighters. The army said it was using
heavy armour and 1,000 "anti-terrorist" troops, but it remained unclear
if the action had done more than intensify the fighting and reinforce some
Serb positions on the third straight day of heavy fighting. Serb sources
said eight KLA men were captured.
Senior KLA commanders said that they aimed to
liberate all of the Serbian province of Kosovo after taking the strategic
southwestern town of Orahovac, with a population of 30,000. One officer
said: "We will not step backwards, only forwards. We will fight until the
last square metre of territory is liberated." His comments marked a new
strategy for the KLA, one that its senior officers claim will include the
conquest of large towns and cities in Kosovo.
Yugoslav security forces killed at least 20 Kosovo
Albanian guerrillas in a border ambush yesterday and began to drive separatist
attackers from Orahovac, official Serb sources said. The army scattered
three groups of several hundred KLA guerrillas trying to cross into Kosovo
from Albania at around midnight.
Serb informants said that the death toll was
much higher than the 20 reported as the Albanians fled, dropping large
quantities of Chinese- made weapons and ammunitions destined for KLA forces
who claim to control half of Kosovo. The fighting was on the Kosovo-Albania
mountain border near Djeravica where the army reported killing 30 KLA men
in a similar ambush on Saturday. Rebels moved their sandbagged positions
south towards Orahovac on Friday night, taking up positions at a high school,
the post office and a medical facility.
From a vantage point north of the police station
yesterday, billows of smoke could be seen rising from mostly Albanian villages
on the outskirts of the town. Rebel sources claimed that ethnic Albanian
farmhouses had been burnt in the area when Serb tanks and artillery began
retaliatory shelling. In Malishevo, a rebel stronghold six miles north,
officers with full body armour and heavy weaponry scurried into cars that
sped to the front lines. Tractors pulling carts of 20 and 30 refugees fled
the scene of heavy fighting, in a scene reminiscent of fighting earlier
this summer that left tens of thousands of Albanians on the run.
Senior KLA commanders claimed last week that
America and Europe cannot stop their battle for independence. Their growing
defiance appeared to reflect a new determination to "go it alone" in their
battle to create an independent Kosovo. "Kommandanti" Shaban Shala, one
of a handful of senior commanders in the KLA's joint command, said: "The
West does not have the mandate to stop a people from fighting for their
freedom. They can support us if they like."
The army has grown from a loosely knit band of
several hundred early this year to a guerrilla army that Serb sources now
estimate at 18,000. European and United State diplomats have called in
vain on the KLA to halt its steady expansion of territory inside Kosovo.
The Independent
Kosovo clash
YUGOSLAV SECURITY forces killed at least 20 Kosovo
Albanian guerrillas in a border ambush yesterday, and began to drive the
separatist attackers from the south-west town of Orahovac, according to
official Serb sources.
Unofficial Serb informants said the death toll
was much higher than the 20 reported as the Albanians fled, dropping weapons
destined for the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The fighting occurred on the Kosovo-Albanian
border near Djeravica, where the army reported killing 30 KLA men in a
similar ambush on Saturday.
According to the Tanjug news agency, the Yugoslav
government has protested to Britain over the activities of British aid
worker Sally Becker, who was jailed for 30 days in Djakovica for trying
to smuggle Kosovo Albanian refugees across the border into Albania proper.
Ms Becker, 37, allegedly entered Kosovo illegally from Albania and was
captured trying to return on Friday with a woman and her two children.
BBC News
Monday, July 20, 1998 Published at 02:29 GMT
03:29 UK
Battle continues for Kosovo town
Serb forces and ethnic Albanian rebels have been
continuing their battle for the town of Orahovac in the Serbian province
of Kosovo.
The Serbs said they re-took the town, but Kosovo
Liberation Army guerrillas said they had trapped up to 200 Serb police
in the centre.
BBC Defence Correspondent Mark Laity, who was
at the scene, said morale among the KLA was high.
He said fighting was continuing in the town centre,
with a steady crack of sniper fire and rattle of machine-guns. He saw several
columns of smoke rising.
Correspondents said hundreds of civilians were
fleeing the area on tractors and horse-drawn wagons.
New strategy
One of the KLA commanders in the town said the
assault was a deliberate shift of strategy for the organisation to move
into urban areas.
Until now it has relied on hit-and-run tactics
of striking and then disappearing before the more heavily armed Serbs can
react.
Our correspondent says such tactics contain risks
for the KLA, because seizing territory gives the Serbs more chance to effectively
use their tanks and artillery against the lightly-equipped guerrillas.
The battle for Orahovac has lasted three days.
If the guerrillas take it, it will be their biggest victory of the conflict.
The town is in the southwest of Kosovo, 30 miles
(50km) from the capital Pristina. It has a population of around 15,000,
mainly ethnic Albanians
Border clashes continue
Fighting also erupted near the Albanian border,
where the Serbs said they had frustrated another attempt by the KLA to
get large numbers of reinforcements into Kosovo. Some reports said there
were up to 90 dead.
There are fears the war could spread after Albania's
deputy interior minister, Ilir Cano, accused the Serbs of firing two mortar
rounds into Albanian territory.
He said: "These dangerous incidents could have
very dangerous consequences."
Belgrade and Tirana at loggerheads
Tirana has lodged a formal protest and demanded
a meeting with the Yugoslav authorities.
The Yugoslav army denied violating the border.
In a separate development, the Serbian Journalists'
Association reported the Yugoslav army as saying that a group which tried
to enter Kosovo on Saturday included 16 foreign Islamic fighters.
It said documents found at the scene showed that
they were five Macedonian citizens of Albanian nationality, six Saudi Arabian
nationals, one Yemeni, and four people registered in Briden in Germany
whose names suggested that they were of Arab origin.
The Army said it thought they were Islamic fighters
organised as a special formation of the KLA's third group.
Meanwhile, the Albanian Government has denied
allegations - broadcast by Serbian state television - that there are about
300 Albanian army officers in Kosovo.
The Deputy Defence Minister, Ilir Bocka, said
the Albanian army was not involved in any action outside the country's
borders.
He said the allegation was aimed at involving
Albania in a very dangerous conflict which threatened the whole region.
Serbian television said the Albanian officers
were commanding operations by the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army. It
said its report was based on statements by detained guerrilla fighters.
--
Kosova Information Centre - London
DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF ALBANIA_______________________________________________________________________
Tirana, July 19, 1997DECLARATION
The Democratic Party of Albania denounces in the firmest terms the shelling in Padesh village, in the northern Albanian town of Tropoja by the Serb artillery as another aggressive act of Belgrade that gravely violates the integrity and sovereignty of Albania.
The Democratic Party considers this act as another evidence of the will of the butcher of the Balkans to spread the conflict and the aggression he has undertaken against Kosova beyond its borders in order to prolong his power.
Likewise, the Democratic Party denounces the irresponsible stand of the Tirana government which in continuation of the Crete platform and in a total act of capitulation has left the bordering areas as well as all the country without any real defense.
In front of this situation, the Democratic Party calls first of all on all local authorities, its members, supporters and activists, as well as on all the Albanians that love this country to join and make all the necessary measures to give the deserved answer to each act intending to violate the sovereignty of Albania.
The Democratic Party calls on the member countries of the Contact Group and the North Atlantic Alliance to intervene energetically to interrupt Serb aggression in Kosova and the escalation of the conflict broader in the region.
--
Democratic Party of Albania
http://www.albania.co.uk/dp
e-mail. dpa@albania.co.uk
TWO ALBANIAN teenagers were reportedly beaten
and tortured by Greek police officers at the Stylida precinct in an attempt
to extract confessions for thefts
'In thirty years I haven’t seen a prisoner in
such a condition, ' Korydallos juvenille detention center director Haralambos
Zagorakis told the Athens daily Eleftherotypia, commenting on the condition
of one of the youths. 'The injuries are recent, as confirmed by medical
opinions,' he added.
The two cousins, both about 17 years old, had
been in Greece for approximately one year and had found employment as farm
workers in the village of Avlaki, near Lamia.
According to their own account, the teenagers
left the job when their employer stopped paying them, finding refuge in
an abandoned truck which was occupied by another Albanian. Objects allegedly
stolen by the other man were later found in the truck. The deputy director
of the Stylida precinct, officer Nikos Koutsoulis, said the youths were
injured when arrested and that witnesses testified to the thefts.
The two teenagers were arrested in connection
with the thefts while swimming on July 11 and taken to the Stylida police
precinct. It was here that ten officers allegedly handcuffed, stripped
and beat them with clubs and water hoses in an attempt to extract a confession
from the youths, who did not speak Greek. That having failed, the policemen
poured alcohol on one of the detainees, setting him alight and causing
burns to the stomach and genital area. The teenagers were tried in an emergency
court proceeding the next day and sentenced to a three-year prison term
before being sent to the juvenile detention center.
Albanian consul to Greece Mahil Anti said a demarche
would be submitted to the Greek government. Anti said he found the burn-scarred
youth on the floor with no bed in a room with 17 other minors.
A European Commission report has found abuses
in Greek transients’ prisons.
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