ALBANIANS in SERBIAN PRISONS. Ksosovo’s unfinished Business. (ICG Balkans Report N° 85)
While the international community does not itself have the capacity to free these prisoners, it must find ways to exert maximum pressure on Milošević to order their release. Thousands of Albanian lives are at stake: reports from recently released prisoners and from family members make clear that the prisoners' conditions in the Serbian facilities are appalling, their health has been severely compromised, they are routinely subjected to mistreatment and torture, and their trials are travesties. In addition, many prisoners’ families have been effectively ransomed by Serbian lawyers, who have promised to secure the release of prisoners for sums ranging from 10,000 to 50,000 DM. The emotional and material strain on prisoners' families contributes to Kosovo's continuing unrest and to the immense frustration Kosovars feel toward the international agencies which, in part out of a dearth of options to pursue, have not made a top priority of locating the prisoners or advocating on their behalf. // In this paper ICG attempts to clarify the somewhat complex situation with regard to the Albanian prisoners, to make available first-hand information about Serbian prison conditions gathered in interviews with ex-prisoners and prisoners' family members, to elucidate the pertinent legal issues, and to propose a series of measures that governments and non-government organisations might take toward identifying the prisoners and securing their release.
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