Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told patients were under investigation and a criminal proceeding had been instituted against them. It happened that the competent Investigating Judge would either falsely assert that the Criminal Procedure Code prevented him from giving his permission to either lawyers or OSCE-KVM members to visit patients under investigation, or would refer back to the local police command, who would regularly refer back to the competent Investigating Judge. Nevertheless, ill-treatment of patients was a relatively isolated occurrence, since it attracted considerable attention from the OSCE-KVM, and could therefore 23 be curbed, although never eradicated. Torture and ill-treatment during forced expulsions The experience of being forced out of one's home at gunpoint is itself traumatic. Serbian forces, including notoriously brutal paramilitary units, tended to use violence as part of the coercive efforts to make individuals, families and communities leave their homes. In many cases, the victims of illtreatment and torture died from their injuries, or were summarily and arbitrarily killed after having first been made to suffer. The forced expulsion of people from the village of Lesane/Leshane (Suva Reka), is illustrative of the way in which violence was employed. One interviewee described to the OSCE-KVM how, on 28 March 1999, at around 13:00, Serb forces arrived in the village, after burning the nearby village of Trnje. They began shooting into the air, shouting: "You wanted NATO to attack us! Do you know what NATO did in Serbia? Now we are going to kill all of you!" The interviewee was with other villagers at the school building, where people had gathered because Serbs were burning houses and shooting into homes. Then Serbs entered the school area and ordered men to one side, women and children to other. Those who did not comply or walk fast enough were beaten with gun butts. The men were ordered to make the threefinger Serb salute and shout "Serbia! Serbia!" Then the men were lined up against a wall and the Serbs began taking aim at them, in a mock execution. The women began crying and shouting out for their husbands and sons. Then a Serb who appeared to be a policeman ordered the women and children to leave immediately for Prizren. The men were then ordered to sit down. A large police vehicle approached with a machine-gun mounted on top. The mounted gun was rotated towards the sitting men. Then one man (named in the interview) was picked out and assaulted (kicked, punched, hit with a gun butt). The interviewee says they were taking this man to be killed when another police officer said that it was not necessary, he had been beaten enough. 24 Groups of IDPs were an easy target for members of Serbian forces, whether they were travelling on Kosovo's roads towards a presumably safer place or towards the border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or Albania, or sheltering on remote hillsides or in forest areas in central Kosovo. Police officers, reservists and members of paramilitary units would detain and ill-treat Kosovo Albanian IDPs, often with the aim of extorting money from them. The OSCE-KVM has received numerous reports where some of the groups were singled out (most often young men or children) and threatened with death if a certain sum of money and amount of jewellery were not handed over. Sometimes the "hostages" were beaten and threatened at gunpoint, often enough they were actually killed, which made such threats credible. http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/ch6.htm (8 of 12)12/5/2003 11:51:07 AM