One of the ten arrested KLA suspects released from detention
One of the ten arrested former Albanian guerillas, suspected of killing 51 Serbs in 1999, was released from detention on Thursday and will be able to defend himself from outside bars.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Friday, January 09, 2009
Muhamed Nuhiu was the only member of the group of ten arrested who was still detained in the southern town of Presevo.
The nine other ones were transferred to a detention center in Belgrade.
Earlier, ethnic Albanians in Presevo continued their protests against the arrests.
The protests will last until "every single Albanian arrested on the orders of the War Crimes Prosecution on December 26 is released from custody", said Memet Azizi, one of the protest organizers.
"We want the authorities in Belgrade to release all the suspects on bail because they did not commit the war crimes that the prosecution has accused them of," says Azizi.
More than a thousand protesters carried placards reading, "Presevo valley is Kosovo", "NATO control in Presevo valley", as well as Albanian and EU flags, and photographs of the ten arrested suspects.
Former member of the so-called Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac Liberation Army (Albanian: UCPMB) Orhan Redzepi, said that Albanians will, beside protests, "undertake other steps".
When asked which steps he had in mind, Redzepi said, "we'll see".
UCPMB was an offshoot of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which attacked Serbian security forces in the area after the 1999 war in the province.
"I think that with this, the poking of the sleeping lion has started, only, it would be good not to stab it, because it would turn from a sleeping to a wounded lion," Redzepi elaborated.
The ten ethnic Albanians arrested in December were members of KLA's Gnjilane Group. They are suspected of committing war crimes, that include kidnapping, rape, torture, mutilation and murder of at least 51 Kosovo Serb civilians.
The crimes took place in the Gnjilane region after the 1999 war - from June to October that year.
