Mother of the beaten children: I found my children with guns above their heads

Marija Radosavljevic, the mother of two children who were beaten yesterday by the members of the special unit of the Kosovo Police, says that she would not wish what she experienced for any mother.

Visibly shaken, she recounted for Kosovo Online how she had found the children beaten when they had called her to come to pick them up.

"I was in town, as I was taking my youngest son to training. My older son called me and said that they had been abused and that someone had to come to pick them up. I said that I would come right away, thinking that I should bring ID cards," Marija says in tears.

She says, she tried to talk to her son and daughter afterward, but they didn't answer the phone, so she thought that the policemen had taken away their devices.

"I took my ID cards and left, and when I arrived at that place there was an armored vehicle in front of me, and when I looked away, my daughter was sitting crying in the meadow, completely torn," she pointed out.

Radosavljevic said that she had immediately run towards her daughter, but that the Police had prevented her from approaching her. Above the girl stood two policemen with guns in their hands.

"I tried to calm her down, but I never succeeded. At one point, she told me that she couldn't calm down when her brother had been beaten. I turn down and our quad is standing next to the armored vehicle, and my son is crouching and holding his hands overhead," she recounted.

Radosavljevic said that she had asked for water, which at first the policemen had not wanted to give her, but then they had relented, so she had poured water on her daughter to calm her down.

"With a policeman who knew Serbian, we lifted her and put her in the car. After that, I returned to my son and saw that he had numerous bruises and contusions. I told him, "Don't be afraid," and he replied, "How can I not be afraid," she pointed out.

His statement "Mother, if you hadn't come, I wouldn't be able to have children" was particularly shocking.

"I was very scared then. I showed the policemen his identity card that he was a child. When they saw that he was born in 2007, they also took my identity card. I asked the policeman, who knew Serbian, why they had beaten my children, and whether they had children. He told me that he knew my daughter because he often drove through this area. I asked, "So when you know her, why did you beat her", to which he replied that she had been wearing a helmet, so they hadn’t known she was a girl," she explained.

Radosavljevic stated that they had been released and that, when she had come home, she had seen that her son had been beaten in numerous places and that he had many bruises.

Then the children told her that the son had defended his sister when she had been dragged by the police, and the sister had defended the brother when they had attacked him.

That's why they separated them later.

When informed that the Kosovo police denied beating the children, she said that she did not know what they were claiming, but that she knew that her children did not sleep all night.

"I am not interested in what they say. If any of them are human, they will tell what happened. I just know that no mother should experience the pain that I experienced yesterday. Given the situation and everything that is happening around us, you have to see children crouching in front of the policemen. They are only 15 and 17 years old. What have my children done and to whom - nothing to anyone. I don't understand," Marija said, who could not understand what had happened to her children.