Kosovo War Trial Witness ‘Saw Guerrillas Beating Prisoner’

A protected witness told the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Tuesday that he saw five or six people beating a prisoner who was being held in an improvised detention facility in the village of Zllash/Zlas, some 30 kilometres east of Kosovo's capital Pristina, during the war in 1999.

The witness, who was testifying at the trial of former Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla Salih Mustafa, said that he and four other people who were detained there were able to see the violence "through the holes of a cowshed" where the prisoner was assaulted.

"The second time they brought him to the cowshed, he was almost dead. He barely stood up… When they finished the beating, they brought him where we were staying. Every time they brought him [at the cowshed] they told us to say 'Death to traitors', 'Death to thieves' and 'Glory to the KLA'," the witness said.

His testimony echoed a previous witness who said last month that he was detained by KLA fighters in a cowshed, beaten up, urinated upon and given electric shocks.

Mustafa is accused of involvement in murder, torture, cruel treatment and arbitrary detentions during the Kosovo war in April 1999 at a KLA-run detention compound in Zllash/Zlas, which was allegedly run by a unit that he commanded.

He allegedly committed his crimes against prisoners accused by the guerrilla fighters of collaborating with enemy Serbs or not supporting the KLA's cause. He has pleaded not guilty.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers were established to prosecute KLA fighters for crimes committed during the guerrilla force's 1998-99 war of resistance against Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic's repressive rule. Mustafa is the first ex-KLA fighter to be tried there.

The Specialist Chambers are part of...