Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told After the declaration of the state of war the Yugoslav government decreed a far-reaching modification of the rules governing arrest which gave broad powers to the police, including the right to conduct house searches without a court warrant and detain persons for up to 30 days. 5 Arbitrary arrest procedures The OSCE-KVM reported numerous cases where persons were detained in contravention of established procedures, rendering such arrests unlawful under national law as well as international standards. For example, in many instances arrests were made without the detainee being promptly informed of the reasons for the arrest. When challenged by the OSCE-KVM in the period January-March 1999, the Serbian police acknowledged that it had carried out widespread arrests and detentions, but denied that these were arbitrary in nature. The authorities argued, for instance, that there was no legal requirement to 6 inform the detained person of the reasons for the arrest. This position was affirmed by interpretations of Serbian laws which allowed the police the largest possible operational options, and the lack of judicial control of libertarian constitutional guarantees provided the Serbian police with a general privilege of impunity. Particularly during the period of the NATO air offensive, individuals were randomly taken into custody, to be given only later a "legal document" (i.e. an arrest warrant). This indicated the reasons for their detention but failed to provide any particulars of the infractions they were accused of having committed, except for the accusation itself. This procedure was often explicitly based on the new Yugoslav state of war legislation. The random factor of many arrests and the merely formalistic issuing of an arrest warrant are highlighted by a number of cases reported to the OSCE-KVM. An [identified and named] inspector asked [an interviewee] to co-operate and become a spy for the police. [The interviewee] refused. [The officer] threatened that if [he] did not comply [his] family would not be safe and said: "Today, the price of a man's head is cheaper than a kilo of flour. We killed Fehmi Agani, so it will be easy to kill you, too!" [The officer] knew that [the interviewee] was an activist and that [he] had spent time in prison. He gave [him] a paper saying [he] was detained on the basis of "Hostile Activity against the State" [Article 136(1) KZSRJ]. The document also mentioned that the pre7 charged period was prolonged to 30 days, following a change in the law. Arrests for arbitrary reasons There was, furthermore, a general pattern by which Kosovo Albanians were taken into custody for completely arbitrary reasons. In such cases, the only basis for the detention was that it was often linked to situations such as individuals being from a particular village believed to be sympathetic to the UCK, or because the person happened to be a "man of fighting age", which cannot be considered an objective reason for arrest. The most common pretext for arrest was, however, the lack of any proper identification documents and the purported necessity for the police to establish someone's identity. Given that a very http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/ch9.htm (2 of 16)12/5/2003 11:52:05 AM