52
Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001
AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
Amnesty International September 2001
beaten with sticks and metal pipes again. Police
allegedly told him that he was going to be killed, and
threatened to dress him in a Macedonian army
uniform and take him to a place controlled by the
NLA. A machine gun was put to his head. M.B. was
kicked and beaten again until he lost consciousness.
The whole incident lasted for about 48 hours. During
this time his family was not informed of his
whereabouts.
Ill-treatment by police was also reported by
villagers from Poroj and Germo, village suburbs of
Tetovo. A total of 28 men, all ethnic Albanians, were
stopped at checkpoints or taken from their houses by
police on 6 April, at about 6.30am. They were all
handcuffed and forced to enter a lorry. According to
their accounts, there were about 10 policemen inside,
some of them wearing masks, armed with wooden
bars and metal pipes. Those detained had to lie down,
and were then reportedly beaten and insulted before
being transported to Tetovo police station. There, on
the way from the lorry to the entrance of the building,
they had to walk between two lines of police officers,
who again beat and kicked the men. At the police
station they were interrogated about their alleged
contacts with the NLA. When they were allowed to
leave the building after the interrogation, a group of
policemen, many of them again masked, and some of
them reservists and allegedly drunk, are said to have
waited for the released villagers in order to beat them
again. One victim reports that he was even followed
to the hospital by police, who were present during his
medical treatment.
AI collected further reports of police ill-treatment
in several police stations in Skopje and Tetovo, where
Albanians suspected of collaboration with the NLA
were allegedly beaten. Police were also said to have
beaten up persons they suspected of being NLA
supporters on the streets of Skopje.
Ill-treatment of Albanian citizens
In May and June the press in Albania reported that
Albanian citizens on several occasions had been
arrested and ill-treated by police in Macedonia. On 20
June Macedonian state television (MTV1) reported
that the Ministry of the Interior had carried out
“another successful operation”: a group of 30 “illegal
immigrants from Albania travelling in five stolen
cars” had been arrested in Skopje, and police were
investigating possible links between these men and the
NLA. Two days later, the Macedonian authorities
returned the men to Albania, after banning their re-
entry to the Macedonia for five years. At the border
crossing the men informed the Albanian police that
they had been severely beaten during their detention,
and at least five of them were reportedly sent for
medical treatment to Pogradec hospital. According to
their accounts, they had entered Macedonia with
regular visas, and hired taxis to drive to Skopje, and
were planning to cross into Greece illegally for work.
In signed statements which several (Hajri Enver Zebi,
Lirim Sula and Mevlud Derti) subsequently made to
the Albanian Ombudsman’s Office, they stated that
Macedonian police officers had accused them of
having been sent by the Albanian state authorities to
fight with the NLA, had kicked and beaten them with
truncheons, metal bars and rifle butts, and had seized
money and valuables from them.
The Albanian Ombudsman requested his
Macedonian counterpart to investigate this incident. In
a letter dated 22 August the Macedonian Ombudsman
replied that he had asked the Ministry of Internal
Affairs for a full report, which confirmed that 27
Albanian citizens had been detained on 20 June for
questioning and that they were planning to cross the
border illegally into Greece. He concluded: “...I can
tell you that the officers of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs...acted within their legal powers and did not
use physical force”.
Allegations of ill-treatment by the NLA
AI has also received reports of ill-treatment by the
NLA. However, as most of the areas under the control
of the NLA were difficult to reach for security reasons,
reports of human rights abuses by NLA members were
extremely hard to confirm. In one reported incident,
the NLA held two groups totalling 21 ethnic Serbian
men in the village of Matejce, west of Kumanovo,
from 24 to 28 May and abused eight of them
physically. The elderly Serbs, some of them fathers of
police officers, reported that they had been beaten and
kicked while detained over a period of four days. The
NLA also allegedly threatened to kill them. The
injuries suffered by some of those detained are said to
have required hospital treatment.
According to information received from local
Albanian journalists, the body of Metush Ajeti was
found on the street in Skopje on 9 June. They claimed
that prior to this he and his son Xhelal Ajeti had
reportedly been arrested and beaten by at a police
station in Skopje. However, the spokesperson of the
Ministry of Interior, Stevo Pendarovski, denied that
Metush Ajeti had ever been arrested by the police.
According to a report by the Macedonian Helsinki
Committee, on 2 April a 16-year-old boy, was shot by
security forces close to Tetovo (and apparently died
later of his injuries). The Albanian language
newspaper, Kosovapress, reported that the boy, Omer
Shabani, had just returned to his home village of Selce
with a large group of villagers after the Macedonian
offensive at the end of March and was with two other
young boys retrieving his animals from the pastures
above the village when shot. The Macedonian
Ministry of Defence claimed they were members of
the NLA trying to infiltrate the village again.
On 12 June an ethnic Albanian politician, Naser
Hani, was shot in the street and killed outside the
police station in Struga. The perpetrators have not
been found and there were allegations that either the
Macedonian security forces or Albanian political
opponents were responsible.
Refugees and internally displaced persons