Journalist says former KLA leader threatened to behead him

The former head of the KLA command, and then PDK senior official, Azem Syla, threatened to "cut off the head" from the reputable Albanian journalist Mero Baze.

When Baze mentioned the murdered journalist Enver Maloku, Syla implicitly made him aware that "they" did it. Nevertheless, he underlines that in the context of the event this was not a recognition of murder, but an attempt to intimidate.

Recalling the event, which took place during the second phase of the Rambouillet talks, Baze for the Journalists' Association of Serbia points out that all the murders of journalists in Kosovo should be classified as political, adding that in Kosovo at that time was "the prevailing perception that a journalist opposing the KLA should be punish. "

Syla was close associate of current Kosovo President Hashim Thaci at the time, and in the report of the International Crisis Group "Who's Who in Kosovo" in 1999, he was described as his uncle.

Threats at the hotel

For the UNS Dossier, the editor of the "Tema" newspaper recalls an incident that took place in 1999 in a hotel in Paris.

- At that time I worked as a reporter for Radio Free Europe and some Albanian newspapers in Tirana, Prishtina and Skopje, where I continually criticized the communist tendencies expressed by some KLA leaders when they emphasized the importance of removing "internal enemies" in Kosovo. A colleague told me that a commander known as "Uncle" wants to see me. It was Azem Syla. During the conversation, he threatened to "cut off my head" if I kept on writing about them. I would not say that I felt really vulnerable, but it turned out that I was right about everything I wrote about them, which is a communist mentality of intolerance not only towards political opponents, but also towards the free press.

"When you threaten me so, you seem to suggest that you have done it to some of my colleagues," I told him,...

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