“I LIVED IN THE WATER, AND THE HITS AND THE EXAM WAS EVERY DAY”: Milovan was kidnapped by Albanians, and now he seeks JUSTICE

Among them is Latif Gashi, one of the commanders of the so-called ELK for the Bajora camps and a place called Bare, in the municipality of Podujeva, which was summoned to the Special Court in The Hague a few days ago.

With these words, Milovan Stanković (72) from Bučić village not far from Prokuplje, a former forester in Podujevo and the first prisoner of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army in Podujeva municipality, expresses the hope that his ” executioner “receive the deserved punishment. Prosecutors in The Hague also previously questioned Milovan, who tried unsuccessfully for years to seek justice from the Kosovo judiciary.

– In October last year, prosecutors from The Hague came to me – says Stanković, who still feels the health consequences of captivity.

He remembers that August 2, 1998, when, he says, he was kidnapped by members of the so-called KLA.

– I was in the Dobra Voda camp, where I came across four masked people who were illegally cutting down the forest. They surrounded me, tied my hands and eyes and took me to Bare, where they kept me for fifteen days in a kind of bunker, where I literally survived alone in the water – Milovan remembers the hardest days of his life, adding that the beatings and the interrogations were an integral part of his incarceration.

When they were running out of strength, they transferred him to the former cooperative, where a teacher, an Albanian, was also detained in a room when members of the so-called ELK were deemed unfit. Although they were given food in this place, the beating and torture continued, and as Milovan points out, it was Ljatif Gashi who took the initiative.

Milovan says he came out of captivity with four broken ribs, no hair, very thin:

– I am happy to have returned to my family alive and to be able to testify about the weeks that the KLA members did in the supposed peace and months before the war in Kosovo and Metohija.

He also explains that the trial, which began before the Kosovo courts and was led by UNMIK and EULEX, was underway, so that after several years of trial during which the judges changed, the roles of his case magically disappeared.