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Prominent Kosovo Albanian Political Prisoner Released
MERDARE, Yugoslavia, Dec. 8 (News Agencies) - A high-profile Kosovo Albanian political prisoner, jailed by the regime of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, was released from a 15-year jail term late on Friday and returned to Kosovo, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"The worst thing has happened," Albin Kurti told reporters on his release. "I've been freed alone. My friends are still in prison in Serbia. I never asked for amnesty or a pardon," he said as he arrived by Red Cross jeep in the town of Merdare on the Kosovo border.
Albin Kurti was arrested in Kosovo in April 1999 at the height of fighting between ethnic Albanian separatists and Milosevic's forces.
He was 25 when he was jailed in March last year, convicted of involvement with the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The now-disbanded KLA led a separatist fight until a NATO bombing campaign forced troops loyal to Milosevic to withdraw in 1999.
Kurti was a student leader and spokesman for one of the main ethnic Albanian leaders, Adem Demaci, who at the time was the KLA political representative in the Kosovo capital, Pristina.
There was no official acknowledgement of Kurti's release in Belgrade and it was not known who had ordered him to be freed or why, said AFP.
Kosovo was placed under U.N. administration in June 1999 after Milosevic's forces retreated, following an intensive 78-day bombing campaign of Yugoslavia from the air by U.S.-led NATO forces.
Serbian forces are thought to have transferred around 2,050 prisoners - the vast majority of them ethnic Albanians - back to Serbia after they withdrew from Kosovo in June 1999.
Some of the prisoners were convicted and sentenced to jail terms, while others were freed before trial due to lack of evidence. Some were returned in exchange for Serbs held by ethnic Albanians.
About 200 other ethnic Albanians from Kosovo are still thought to be imprisoned in Serbia, most of them serving sentences for alleged "terrorist activities", according to legal officials in Belgrade.
During his trial, Kurti denounced Serbian state institutions and refused to accept a court-appointed lawyer, according to AFP.
Kosovo held its first democratic regional elections last month to elect an assembly with substantial autonomy from Belgrade.
Milosevic was ousted from power in October last year, allowing Vojislav Kostunica to take over as Yugoslav president. Since the reformist leadership came to power, many of the Albanian prisoners have been released, notably famous Kosovo poet and human rights activist, Flora Brovina.
Milosevic is being held in a detention center of the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. He is due to appear before the tribunal on December 11 to enter his plea on genocide charges related to his role in the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, where thousands of Muslims were killed upon his orders.
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