K. Albanian professor among media workers executed by KLA

Hoti - born in 1945 in Ratkovac - was a Russian language professor at the Pristina University, a translator, and a media worker who was captured and murdered while working with a Russian state television crew that was in Kosovo in July 1998 in an attempt to interview members of the KLA ("Kosovo Liberation Army") in the village of Lapusnik.

Hoti's is the 15th name on a list of murdered and kidnapped journalists and media workers in Kosovo, an UNS investigation has shown.

Upon arriving in Pristina on July 20, 1998, the Russian TV crew asked Hoti - who beside Russian and his mother tongue, also spoke English well - to assist them.

In his role as translator, Hoti departed on the journalistic assignment together with reporter Oleg Safiulov, cameraman Aleksandr Galanov, and sound engineer Viktor Mamaev.

In Lapusnik, on the Pristina-Pec road, KLA members first stopped their vehicle and told them they could not film there, and then captured the crew, taking away their equipment, documents, and money.

Two hours later, Hoti was separated and taken to the foot of a nearby hill in another vehicle. The journalists saw him next in a house in Lapusnik, battered, bloodied, and scared.

"When they took my blindfold off, I saw Shaban Hoti, because he was translating that conversion," Oleg Safiulin said in his testimony before the Hague Tribunal. "It was clear he had been beaten. He had a hematoma on his face, blood on his pants, shirt, and shoes, and he was very scared. He was simply shaking with fear. He had a lost look on his face."

The Russian journalists were released on July 21, 1998, around 19:30 hours, but Shaban Hoti was kept captive. Ahead of the arrival of Serbian forces in Lopusnik five days later,...