Prosecutor Pach: The KLA tortured the victims in the cruelest way; those responsible for the crimes must be punished

Victims who had survived torture in KLA prisons still had consequences, psychological and physical trauma, prosecutor James Pach said at the Special Court in The Hague at the trial of KLA leaders, stressing that those responsible for their suffering had to be punished.

He listed the locations where KLA victims had been imprisoned and listed all the criminal acts that the members of that armed organization had committed against all those they had considered to be spies and opponents of their policies.

He assessed that the victims throughout Kosovo had been tortured according to the same pattern - beating with baseball bats, metal rods, butts, and pistols, pulling out nails, and keeping them in unhygienic conditions without food and water.

Also, the prosecutor emphasized that the victims had been threatened with rape and endangering their families.

Pach also concluded that all the victims had been suspected of collaborating with the Serbs and of being traitors.

"In Bajc, Hashim Thaci and Sabit Geci interrogated the detainees, called them 'Rugovs' and asked them to write statements renouncing Ibrahim Rugova and the LDK, as well as to resign from their parliamentary mandates. Detainees were interrogated and abused in Cahan, and the same is the case in Bublje, Kostec, Verban, and Tuzus. All the victims are accused of ties and collaboration with the Serbian authorities," the prosecutor said.

According to the prosecutor, in Likovac, Jablanica, Llapushnik, Malisheva, Budakovo, Jeskovo, and Zlas, detainees had been kept in rooms that had been locked and guarded by the KLA.

"Detainees were tied either to themselves, to each other, or to objects such as wood or to radiators in Urosevac, and they used ropes and wire," he said.

The prosecutor said that in Llapushnik, north of Pristina, there had been the headquarters of the Llap zone, where the commander-in-chief had had his office, and not far from there had been the headquarters of the military police, as well as a barn that had been turned into a detention center.

From November 1998 to March 1999, at least 52 detainees were held in Llapushnik, the prosecutor says, adding that there, as in other places, the detainees did not receive sufficient amounts of food and water and did not have adequate sanitary and hygienic conditions, as well as medical attention care, nor a place to sleep.

"You will hear that in Llapushnik there was a concrete floor with animal excrement on it. The prisoners were kept in chains, they had to urinate and defecate in a bucket while they were chained, and then they slept in that same room. You will hear about the conditions of detention in certain locations and that they were so horrible that the people who lived there thought that death was a better option for them," the prosecutor said.

Pach assessed that the members of the KLA had not lacked imagination when it came to torturing abductees.

"They were beaten all over with baseball bats, then kicked, punched, cut, and stabbed with knives. In Drenovac, they beat them with batons, kicked them, hit them, and tortured them with electricity. In Klecka, detainees were kicked with military boots, punched, and beaten with butts, pistols, and hard plastic pipes. In Zlas, they were tortured with electricity, burned with hot wax and hot iron, beaten with steel batons and ax handles, and stabbed with knives. They beat the detainees, even when they lost consciousness. In Cahan in the barracks, detainees were beaten with iron batons, wooden sticks, rubber batons, whips, and cut with razors. In Llapushnik and Verban, they pulled out detainees' nails with pliers," the prosecutor said.

The prosecutor said that with this kind of action, entire families had been permanently ruined, and individuals had been either killed or disabled for life.

He said that survivors of KLA violence, in addition to mental trauma, also had severe physical damage such as hearing loss, and missing limbs, and body parts, and that some were permanently sterile.